Head Start provides children with activities that help them grow mentally, socially, emotionally, and physically. The Head Start staff recognizes that, as parents, you are the first and most important teachers of your child. They welcome your involvement in Head Start activities, and will work as partners with you to help your child progress. Head Start staff members offer your child love, acceptance, understanding, and the opportunity to learn and experience success. Head Start children socialize with others, solve problems, and have other experiences that help them become self-confident.

What Curriculum do we use?

Curriculum is a written plan that includes the following:

•     Goals for children’s development and learning
•     Experiences through which they will achieve these goals
•     What staff and parents do to help children achieve these goals

We use Creative Curriculum for Preschool, which is a blueprint for planning and implementing a developmentally appropriate program. The Creative Curriculum frame work is divided into five parts.

•     How Children Develop and Learn- what preschool children are like in terms of their social/emotional, physical, cognitive, and language development, and the characteristic and experiences that make each child unique.
•     The Learning Environment- the structure of the classroom that makes it possible for teachers to teach and children to learn.
•     What Children Learn- the body of knowledge included in national and state standards and research reports for six   content areas and the process skills children use to learn that content.
•     The Teacher’s Role- how careful observations of children lead to a variety of instructional strategies to guide children’s learning. We use a systematic approach to assessment that enables teachers to learn about and plan for each child and the group.
•     The Family’s Role- the benefits of developing a partnership with every family and working together to support children’s optimal development and learning. We get to know the families, welcome them, and communicate with them regularly.

We also use:

My Teaching Strategies through Creative Curriculum, which is an ongoing assessment through observations conducted on the children during their educational experiences in the classroom.  This assessment system is for children birth through kindergarten that blends ongoing, authentic assessment in all areas of development and learning with intentional, focused performance assessment tasks for selected predictors for school readiness in the areas of literacy and numeracy.  My Teaching Strategies aligns with the expected outcomes identified in state early learning standards and serves the needs of the English language learners.

The Head Start Child Outcomes Framework is composed of 5 general domains, 43 Domain Elements, and numerous examples of specific indicators of children’s skills, abilities, knowledge, and behaviors.