At Tiny Hoppers, we follow and implement an Emergent Curriculum. Applying an emergent curriculum to an early childhood education center is a process that requires an understanding of the individual children in your care as well as the group as a whole. As a teacher, your role is to carefully observe and listen to children as they interact and play to determine their areas of interest, then develop a plan or curriculum to direct their learning which reflects these interests.
The emergent curriculum approach allows classroom educators to gain greater insight into the needs of each individual child, allowing for thoughtful and customized programming. The flexible and open-ended nature of emergent curriculum lets children and educators alike explore, answer questions and guide learning in a way that evolves over time.
Educators, take on the role of facilitator, observing how children play and listen to what they say. Using these observations, they plan activities to build upon their learning, allowing them to discover more and dig deeper. The emergent curriculum is flexible and cannot be planned far in advance. Instead, the program is constantly developing in response to what children are most curious about.
At Tiny Hoppers, after observing the children throughout the day of exploration, the educators set up their classrooms each evening based on all of the interests they discovered that day. When the children arrive in the morning at drop off time, the classroom is filled with wonderful activities ready for the children to begin exploring once again. This process happens each day and each evening to ensure that the children are consistently engaged in learning objectives.
