Early Years

The 2023-24 school year will launch the Early Years learning program for children ages 3.5 (on the first day of the school year, September 6, 2023) to 4 years old.

This multi-age approach to learning will continue to encompass our IB pedagogy that guides students’ learning journey, and adds invaluable benefits to the inquiry-based curriculum, all while providing an authentic childhood experience.

In keeping with the learning standards set by IB’s approach to learning, our new program offers inquiry and play-based learning in an environment that provides each child with a wider range of support. We will refer to this as the "Early Years Nest”, with students sharing two classrooms and four instructors in order to reach each child where they are in their learning journey. While students will still have one assigned classroom teacher and co-teacher, pre-K will become a more collaborative environment by utilizing flow between two classrooms, as well as provide opportunities for unique attention to our early learners, as our instructors will be able to co-teach in this new environment. As modeled by IB schools throughout Europe, the Early Years program makes sense for SPS’ growth trajectory.

This approach fosters:

opportunities for peer support given the multi-age environment,
play as exploratory learning,
individualized attention from our four Early Years teachers,
an environment for curiosity and risk-taking by taking on challenges and persevering through trial and error,
deliberate instruction and guidance within the IB learner profiles represented in the 10 attributes valued by the IB World Schools.

Inquiry-based learning continues to be at the heart of the IB and Seven Peaks School’s approach to fostering whole-child learning.

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FAQS About The Early Years

What Is The Schedule?

The Early Years Learner

At Seven Peaks, children participate in an IB-PYP inquiry-based program that responds to their academic and developmental needs. We allow a balance for children to explore, investigate, and play through freely-chosen activities as well as adult-initiated activities. We call this “planning for possibilities.” We have four core areas of belief:

#1 High Image Of The Child

We believe that children are naturally curious and full of wonder, with an innate ability to question and pursue their own learning. Our teachers view children as competent partners in the learning experience, and understand that each child has a unique pattern of growth and development. We encourage students to develop independence by taking initiative with their own self-care and organization.

#2 LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Our values are communicated and supported by thoughtfully planned learning environments. The physical learning environment is designed to support learning objectives, as well as the unique needs of young children. The arrangement of materials and activities encourages children to make choices, manipulate, create, and represent their ideas and understandings.

#3 Relationships

Our safe and nurturing atmosphere encourages children to build confidence and take risks. We believe that children feel safe and supported when their sense of shared ownership and belonging is emphasized. Connections to home and family are viewed as integral to learning, and are a visible part of curriculum planning and the environment. Children work together as a learning group to foster their individual understanding. as well as make collaborative discoveries.

#4 Play And Exploration

We believe play is essential for young children’s cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development. Through play, children express, consolidate, and extend what they know about the world around them, incorporating their knowledge and skills. Children regularly participate in various kinds of play, which can be either child-led or teacher-initiated.

How Much Does It Cost?

Do Early Years Students Participate In Specials?

What Is The Teacher: Student Ratio?

Does My Child Have To Be Toilet Trained?

Early Learning at SPS

Core Curriculum

Our Early Years program provides ample opportunities for growth in every developmental domain throughout the course of the year relying on play, observations, and activities.

In the Approaches to Learning (ATL) domain, children will develop emotional and behavioral self-regulation skills, cognitive self-regulation skills, initiative and curiosity skills, and creative skills.

In the social-emotional developmental domain, children will enhance their understanding of emotional functioning, sense of identity and belonging, and relationships with trusted adults and other children.

In the language and communication domain, children will be focusing on attending and understanding, communicating and speaking, and vocabulary development.

In the domain of mathematics, children will be developing basic understanding of counting and cardinality, operations and algebraic thinking, measurement and data, and geometry and spatial sense.

Literacy: The literacy curriculum draws on learning objectives from the Kindergarten Common Core Standards. We utilize the Zoo Phonics and Handwriting without Tears curriculum to teach students the building blocks of letter identification, phonemic awareness, concepts of print, letter sound combination, and letter formation. When students are ready, we will work towards recognition of beginning sight words and CVC words, both in reading independently and writing.

Math: Early Years students gain a strong foundation in math, which is critical for ongoing conceptual understanding. Throughout the early years, our kiddos learn through exploration in geometry, counting and cardinality, algebraic thinking, number operations, and measurement.

We work with small groups of students to offer differentiated instruction and individualized guidance. The students will learn to compare and contrast sets of objects and begin to count, read, and write whole numbers up to 30. Students will also be introduced to measurement in standard and nonstandard units, learn to classify objects according to their attributes, and explain why certain objects do not belong. Math in our Early Years program is taught through a hands-on, real world approach where students are encouraged to think abstractly about different concepts, and use their peers to further their inquiry of the math world around them.

Specials

Visual Arts: Our Early Years students learn to play with a variety of mediums and explore how using each medium creates different results. We focus on process, reading stories, and tying the creative process for the day to the stories we read. In these early years, we do lots of exploration and experimentation. The Early Years school year begins with lessons and activities which introduce the students to the basics of color, line, texture, shape, and form. As the year progresses, they begin to put this learning into practice as they experiment with a variety of mediums and learn about specific artists who have used these mediums. During the year, we collaborate with the core classroom during the Sharing The Planet IB Unit, and look at how we can use a variety of recycled materials and “garbage” to create art.

Performing Arts: Early Years students will participate in exercises that help them to be aware of how their voice and body affects and is affected by the world around them. Early exposure to pantomime skills, breathing and relaxation techniques, and playing group games with a shared objective are some of the skills we will begin to develop. When we aren’t moving our bodies and familiarizing ourselves with our vocal capabilities, we will be telling stories, and learning to identify elements of the story.

PE: Students engage in physical activity using whole body movement involving the larger muscle groups. The emphasis will be on everyday functions such as running, jumping, throwing, catching, and body movement. They will also learn hand-eye coordination manipulating objects such as scarves, soft balls, bean bags, ropes, and hoops throughout the year.

Spanish: The students will learn vocabulary (emotions/feelings, numbers, colors, parts of the body, etc.) through games, songs, and having fun while they are learning. The goal is for students to also learn in Spanish some of the topics that they are learning in their other classes, with their teachers implanting IB in Spanish lessons.

Action

These are a few examples of the action projects done in Early Years:

One example of student action in Early Years looks like the following: Upon culmination of our habitat unit we talk about how, as humans, we have our own habitat. We did some brainstorming about what our habitat is, and then the kids began wondering what happens to those people who do not have a habitat to live in (the unhoused). With the guidance of the teacher, the kids began to wonder how we could help those in our environment without homes, so we invited in a guest speaker from Habitat for Humanity to talk about their cause. The kids then decided they wanted to help those in need, so they gathered household items from home to donate to our local Habitat for Humanity.

Class Experiences

Throughout our yearly IB journey, we will be exploring how the world can be explored with senses, how feelings may influence ideas and actions, how people have roles in communities, and how living things may benefit from each other. One highlight of our year would be going to the pumpkin patch during our exploration into how the world can be explored through senses. At the conclusion of the unit, children will design and create a helpful tool for a person who has a visual or hearing impairment.

Another highlight from our year is going to visit a beekeeper, and seeing a beehive. This takes place during our unit of how living things may benefit from each other. During this unit, children will take a plant home to care for it. They will document weekly in a journal a picture and dictation of plant growth. At the end of the unit, children will bring their documentation book back to school to share with the class.

We integrate multiple field trips into our units throughout the Early Years. A few highlights:

Visiting the High Desert Museum to discover more about animals and the habitats they live in.
Taking a trip to Knott Landfill and Recycling Center to learn about where our garbage goes once it is thrown away, and how we can better take care of our environment by recycling.
As part of our last IB unit, we also visit a local grocery store to learn about how our food gets from the farm to the table, and the importance of nutrition.

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