Honey Bears – Three-Four Year Olds
Welcome to the Honey Bears. The three-four-year-old program is carefully planned to keep your child busy and learning through a variety of hands-on experiences each day. The Honey Bear’s daily classroom practice and programming objectives are designed to support Honey Bear School and Child Care Center’s philosophy and established long-term goals.
Curriculum
The curriculum in the Honey Bears is based on accepted current early childhood education theory and methodology and is organized around the basic tenet that children learn first about themselves, their close environment and their families, and then build upon that learning to expand their horizons according to interests and experiential opportunities. The curriculum throughout the center focuses on the developmental needs of the whole child—emphasizing the integration of cognitive, physical and social/emotional development. In the Honey Bear curriculum, themes are designed to include opportunities for children to develop these areas through small and large group activities, self-selected and self-directed independent activities, teacher-initiated activities, time indoors and outdoors, quiet times and active times.
The variety of activities and materials used in the Honey Bear Classroom allows children to explore their environment through their senses. To encourage the development of the whole child, Honey Bear teachers select developmentally (or age) appropriate activities from seven main areas of concentration: language arts and early literacy skills, fine motor, large motor, sensory experiences, science and pre-math, self-care and pre-school learning skills. The activities involve thinking, muscle coordination, imagination and problem solving skills which form the building blocks laid in preparation for formal education and higher reasoning used later in life.
Program Highlights
Art – Children create lots of art in the Honey Bear class. In doing so, besides being creative and expressive, they are also learning fine motor skills, practicing with scissors, learning letters in a fun, dynamic fashion and having fun!”
Music – Honey Bear teachers use lots of music to enhance their large motor and language arts curriculum. There are instruments to play, songs to sing, tumbling tools (foam blocks, scarves, etc.), and extra-large balls, rings, hula-hoops and lots of times to dance. We sing at lunch time and we sing to clean up, we listen to soothing music at nap time and dance with our friends during music time.
Spanish – simple Spanish words (colors, counting, body parts, hello/good-bye) are included in the curriculum.
Special events – Throughout the year the Honey Bear children participate in a variety of special events from holiday pageants and costume parades to a Mother’s Day luncheon with mommy.