How does the curriculum differ from age to age?

The programs for the 2 ½’s, 3’s, 4’s, and 5’s are similar in that the same curriculum content areas and Key Developmental Indicators from the High/Scope curriculum are addressed at each level. However, the attention span of these different aged children can be remarkably varied. For the younger child, structured activities might be shorter and the day might include fewer activities. Stories for the older students may have more words and pages with more complicated plots and a richer vocabulary. Older students have more developed fine motor skills and can begin working on more elaborate projects or drawings. In addition, their expressive skills are more advanced and they can begin to use longer sentences and more complex sentence structures to express ideas, thoughts, concerns, etc. For example, while engaged in pre-writing activities, some children may be dictating their ideas to teachers when working in journals, while others might be writing by themselves using invented spelling. We know that children learn through repetition and that some repetition is important. Each time an activity is repeated; a child gains new insight and is able to internalize his/her learning. We also know that a child’s age is not the only indicator for what is developmentally appropriate. We look at the whole child to determine the types of appropriate activities.