Infant Program (6 weeks to 16 months)

Our curriculum is designed to develop and reinforce each infant’s individuality. Children participate in music based learning experiences, while receiving positive, nurturing guidance from a qualified teacher. Teachers assess an infant’s developing skills, and then provide activities designed to increase those skills.

Your Infant: Areas of Development Emotional Skills: Music encourages infants to explore their emotions. Teachers spend time singing, playing with puppets, and dancing to make your child feel happy and secure. Social Skills: We strive to instill social skills in our youngest community members. We start by helping your infant become aware of other people, and move on to imitating hand and facial gestures. Communication Skills: Our curriculum contains many activities designed to increase your infant’s communication skills, which include listening and making sounds. Infants observe themselves in a child-safe mirror as they make a variety of sounds, and they are spoken to constantly by their teachers.

Fine Motor Skills: Infants’ fine motor skills, which include finger and hand movements, need to be stimulated in many different ways in order for them to improve. Our curriculum offers a wide variety of fine motor skill activities for your infant, from simply shaking a rattle to raking his hands through a container of rice.

Gross Motor Skills: We address all of your infant’s gross motor skills, which include reaching for objects, kicking, sitting, and walking. Infants are encouraged to lie on their stomachs and look at and reach for books and toys to increase their core muscle strength.

Cognitive Skills: Your infant will be encouraged to make associations based on the concept of cause and effect by dumping out toys, building and knocking down towers, and manipulating stacking rings.

Toddler Program (16 to 33 months)

Our toddler curriculum is designed to develop and reinforce each toddler’s individual needs. Children participate in sensory-based learning experiences, while receiving positive, nurturing guidance from our qualified teachers and staff. Teachers assess each child’s developing skills, and then provide activities designed to increase those skills.

Your Toddler: Areas of Development Fine Motor Skills: Toddlers’ fine motor skills, which include finger and hand movements, need to be encouraged in many different ways in order for them to progress. We provide a wide variety of activities for your child to develop his/her fine motor skills, ranging from finger painting, to picking up finger foods, to manipulating clay. Gross Motor Skills: We focus on all gross motor skills, which strengthen the large muscle groups of the body. Activities might include batting at objects, kicking, walking, yoga and running. Children are prompted to climb, jump, hop, and run on the playground to strengthen their leg muscles.

Emotional Skills: Music and Art assist toddlers with exploring all of their emotions, from joy to frustration. Children begin to gain the skills needed, such as patience, cooperation, and sharing.

Toddlers are experiencing a wide variety of emotions, much more than when they were infants. Your toddler’s teacher will guide your child to express his/her emotions in healthy and safe ways. Teachers will show children different ways to convey their emotions, from sadness and frustration to happiness and joy.

Social Skills: We start with the toddlers becoming aware of their classmates and move on to encouraging simple sharing activities. Simple activities are the stepping stones for the later preschool years, when children are developmentally ready to share.

Self Help: Children’s independence will increase as they are introduced to fundamentals of basic self-help tasks, such as pouring juice into a cup during snack time and putting on their jackets and shoes.

Cognitive Skills: Cognitive skills include thinking, learning, and the accumulation of knowledge. Your toddler will begin to sort toys by shape and color and will be encouraged to identify facial features and counting.

As a toddler, children’s cognitive skills are expanding quickly. Teachers provide the children with many activities designed to encourage them to distinguish between textures and to identify shapes and colors.

Communication Skills: Our teachers teach toddlers to put their wants and needs into words. Toddlers are encouraged to sing simple songs, recite nursery rhymes, and expand their vocabularies.

At this stage, children’s vocabulary can grow to nearly 300 words. Our teachers provide children with the tools they need to communicate by guiding them to put their wants and needs into words. Children are encouraged to identify common objects and speak in three-to-five-word sentences.

Preschool Programs

Preschool education is an excellent way to help your child be more school-ready when s/he goes to kindergarten. Little Saints Academy will give your child a balance of learning and fun.

Your Preschooler: Areas of Development Communication and Language Development: Communication entails more than just speaking words; it’s expressing thoughts, wants, and needs. Communication also involves listening and understanding what others are saying. We give children many opportunities to express their thoughts and opinions. As your preschooler moves towards Kindergarten, our teachers will promote early literacy skills, including alphabet letter recognition, phonics, and comprehension, which helps prepare him/her for kindergarten. Five year olds will also have the opportunity to produce a class book on a monthly basis, giving them the chance to work on their expression, writing and drawing skills, which are increasingly important as they prepare for elementary school.

Social and Emotional Development: Our curriculum is full of activities designed to increase children’s independence, allow them to become more confident in their abilities, and prompt them to play a responsible role in their classroom.

Physical Skills: At this stage, our teachers focus on all gross motor skills, which strengthen the large muscle groups of the body, including arms and legs. Gross motor skills include jumping, kicking, throwing and catching a ball, and demonstrating balance, yoga. Children will be encouraged to participate in many favorite childhood games, such as Simon Says; Red Light, Green Light; and Duck, Duck, Goose. We also focus on Fine motor skills, which include the smaller muscle groups, such as fingers and hands. Your Preschooler will enjoy strengthening their fine motor skills through finger painting, sculpting with clay, and doing finger plays.

Cognitive Development: Cognitive skills include problem solving and logical thinking. Children will be encouraged to use their creativity and curiosity when they encounter new tasks, such as building a city out of blocks. Your child will also be guided to try a task in different ways in order to find a solution.

Math and Science Skills Development: Our teachers also focus on math and science tasks, which are vital school readiness skills. Children will be introduced to patterning, classifying, and identifying shapes. The teachers will provide many hands-on opportunities for children to explore colors, weather, animals, plants, sounds, textures and other important science topics. Children will also explore the concepts of time, money, and weight.

Pre Kindergarten Program - This page is under construction.