Oak Grove Academy Creative Curriculum
Program Goals
These goals are specific to the development of the children based on Georgia State Standards/Creative Curriculum for Infants up to 5 years.
https://gelds.decal.ga.gov/GELDS
Social/Emotional Development
Social/emotional development is the ability to understand the feelings of others, control their feelings and behaviors, and get along with peers. It is important to teach these skills to young children because it helps them become competent and confident adults.
There are 3 specific goals for social/emotional development:
1. Achieving a sense of self: knowing oneself, and relating to other people-both children, and adults.
2. Taking responsibility for self and others: following rules, and routines, respecting others, and taking initiative.
3. Behaving in a prosocial way: showing empathy and getting along in the world, for example by taking turns.
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Physical Development
Physical Development includes children’s gross (large muscle) and fine (small muscle) motor skills.
There are two specific goals for physical development:
1. Achieving gross motor skills: moving the large muscles in the body, especially the arms and legs, consciously and deliberately. Gross motor control includes balance and stability; movements such as lifting the head, sitting, crawling, jumping, skipping, and running. Physical manipulations such as throwing, kicking, and catching.
2. Achieving fine motor skills: using coordination with the small muscles in the hands, fingers, and wrists. As these muscles develop, children can perform independent skills and manipulate small objects such as holding a bottle, cutting with scissors, and writing tools. The achievement of fine motor skills typically happens after some gross motor skills have evolved.
Cognitive Development
Cognitive Development refers to the brain/mind and how it works. It involves how children think, process information, how to see the world, and how they use what they learn.
There are 3 goals for Cognitive Development:
1. Approaches to Learning: being purposeful and engaging with information, resources, and materials. As children observe the world around them they are wondering, asking questions, making predictions, and evaluating cause and effect. Knowing how to apply their knowledge helps expand learning even further.
2. Thinking logically: gathering information and categorizing the information through comparing and contrasting, measuring and recognizing patterns. As children use logical thinking, they organize their world and gain a better understanding of how the world works.
3. Representing and thinking symbolically; using objects in a variety of ways. For example, using a block to represent a telephone, a broom as a horse, pretending to be a parent or caregiver, and making a graph to show changes in the weather over time.
Language Development
Language Development includes understanding and communicating through words, written and spoken language. Because words represent objects and ideas, language development is closely related to cognitive development.
There are two goals for language development:
1. Listening and speaking: using spoken language to communicate with others, expressing oneself, and understanding the oral speech of others.
2. Reading and writing: making sense of written language, understanding the purpose of print and how it works, and gaining knowledge of the alphabet.
The Art Process
Process Art is the primary form of art that we do at Oak Grove Academy. You won’t find the halls filled with pre-cut materials, hand prints, etc. (with an exception in our infant room, or specific holiday crafts). Process Art is art that is child-directed, choice-driven, and celebrates the experience of discovery. In process art, the final product is unique to the child and their abilities and goals.
The Art Process has 4 goals:
1. Physical Development- While children are working with paint and paint brushes they are utilizing their fine motor skills, and crossing the midline (reaching from left to right/right to left).
2. Language and Literacy Development- Children are introduced to new vocabulary when art materials and concepts are introduced; scissors, collage, purple, wide, and smooth.
3. Social & Emotional Development- Art supports the development of self-regulation and self-expression as children can choose to mix colors and patterns based on how they are feeling.
For more information about Process Art please visit: https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/families/supporting-development-creativity
Curriculum Approach
Creative Curriculum is the curriculum framework used at Oak Grove Academy. Creative Curriculum is a play based/project-based approach curriculum. Children will be learning academic and developmental skills through real-life experiences in their day-to-day interactions within the classroom. To learn more about this approach please visit: www.teachingstrategies.com
Development Assessment of Children
Oak Grove Academy uses the “Teaching Strategies GOLD” as the primary assessment tool for tracking the development of the children enrolled in OGA. Assessing individual and group progress is key to classroom planning that responds to the needs, interests, and abilities of children in the classroom. All areas of development including social/emotional learning, cognitive, physical, and language/literacy development. A written summary of your child’s developmental progress will be provided three times a year. In general, these reports will be submitted through TSG provided in October, January, and May, these results will be shared with parents during conferences.
Teaching staff creates and maintains a developmental portfolio for every child in Seedlings through Branches. It may include anecdotal notes during observations, drawings, writing samples, rating skills, and a screening checklist. The portfolio is shared with parents during conferences which are held twice a year in November and May.
Every parent is sent an invitation to subscribe to the online GOLD assessment site. The parent can also view the assessment reports completed by the teaching staff during Parent/Teacher Conferences. Home activities are available on the site based on your child’s current developmental level.
Georgia PreK specifically uses “WSO”, Work Sampling Online. The teacher collects evidence of learning through all domains with daily observation. This is submitted twice a year with a narrative summary that covers each domain before conferences.
Developmental Observations and Assessments
● This process includes identifying each child’s needs and interests
● To describe each child’s developmental progress and learning
● To improve curriculum and adapt teaching practices in and the environment.
● To plan program improvement
Observations are conducted by Oak Grove Academy Staff and our State SEEDS Department.
Assessments are conducted on a day-to-day basis in real time using WSO, and/or GOLD Assessment by the Educators in your child’s classroom.
To schedule a tour, please see the sidebar on this page.
To learn more about our curricula for different age levels, see below: