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THREES

Threes

3 - 4 Years

As your little one turns Three, their inquisitive mind is more active than ever. Important developmental changes occur, including a shift from parallel (or independent) play to shared play, and they have an increased ability for independence, comprehension and verbal expression. Our PK3 Program takes advantage of three year olds’ eagerness for discovery and contribution and places children in an environment built to potentiate each child.

Our PK3 Program continues to focus on whole-child development, so there is a more evident focus on school-readiness skills, yet emotional education, inquisitiveness, scientific thinking, citizenship, creativity and innovation, and high-level thinking skills are equally nurtured.

Though pre-reading and pre-writing skills were fostered in our Two’s program, three year olds are now ready to take them a step further. We work on fine motor skills for writing. We focus on letter phonics (how letters sound), which is proven to facilitate children’s reading and writing process. Mathematical concepts like number sense (the understanding of what a number means and the concept of quantity), patterns, sequences, and geometry in the real world, are all a strong focus of our program towards school readiness, and we do so through exciting and meaningful learning experiences that fosters children’s desires to WANT to learn.

Our Teachers take a “mentor” role, and our small group set-up encourages the sharing of ideas and teamwork. Our main goal is autonomous little learners with the tools and desire to discover the world! Read ahead to learn the details of our VESS educational approach for 3 year olds.

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Abilities Fostered

Inquisitiveness

A key goal of our educational program is to nurture autonomous, life long learners, because learning autonomy has been proven to be a key determinant of life success. Learning autonomy starts with sparking curiosity and inquisitiveness, from birth! How do we promote inquisitiveness?
Click to learn more...

Holistic Development

We consider all children as unique individuals with multiple developmental needs. We focus on developing the whole child to their unique potential. Every experience is a learning experience carefully crafted by our teachers. We focus on multi-sensory exploration, which naturally develops your child holistically. Click to learn more...

Scientific Mindset

At 3 years of age, children increase their capacity to express verbally and pose questions about the world around them. What an exciting time! With a school environment that values children’s questions about the world comes an opportunity to promote a scientific mindset. Click to learn more...

Higher-level thinking

Our VESS curriculum fosters development through strategies that promote higher level thinking skills.Higher-level thinking refers to our ability to do certain mental processes more efficiently, making us better learners. This ability is fostered by developing what neuro-scientists have called Habits of Mind – a mental process that, with practice, we do routinely and naturally, turning it into a mental habit. Click to learn more...

Innovation & Creativity

Creativity and Innovation are at the core of the VESS educational approach. Every moment and learning experience focuses on promoting creativity.Through our Artist of the Month, for example,babies are exposed to artists’ stories, techniques, and how they use colors, shapes and lines uniquely to express their emotions. Click to learn more...

Citizenship

All children in our school are seen as global citizens, including our babies. Our babies’ voices are heard as teachers are in tune to their needs, wants, and preferences, and respond to them. Click to learn more...

Learning Autonomy

Learning autonomy refers to the skills and dispositions needed to be independent in one’s capacity to learn new things – and its development starts at birth! It is seen by neuroscientists as a key determinant of life-long success. The VESS educational approach focuses on developing children’s learning autonomy to be efficient learners for life. Click to learn more...

Developmental Areas for Three Year Olds

Self Knowledge, Personal Awareness, Social and Emotional Development

- Building and maintaining
relationships with adults and peers
- Emotional functioning
- Managing emotions
- Sense of identity and belonging

Communication, Language & Literacy

- Listening and understanding
- Speaking and communication
- Conversation
- Emergent Reading
- Emergent Writing
- Vocabulary

Mathematical Thinking

- Number sense
- Numbers and operations
- Spacial Relations
- Patterns
- Measurements and data
- Geometry

Scientific Thinking

- Earth and Space Science
- Engineering and Technology
- Environment
- Life Sciences / Biology
- Physical Sciences / Physics
- Scientific Inquiry, Exploration and Discovery

Approaches to learning

- Creativity and inventiveness
- Eagerness and curiosity
- Persistence

Creative Expression Through the Arts

- Appreciation of the arts
- Creative movement
- Imaginative and creative play
- Music
- Sensory Art Experience

Social Studies

- Culture
- Economics and resources
- Governance, Civic Ideas and Practices
- Individual Development and Identity
- Individuals and groups
- Spaces, Places and Environments
- Technology and our world
- Time, Continuity and Change

Physical Development

- Active physical play
- Feeding and Nutrition
- Fine motor development
- Gross motor development
- Gross motor perception (sensorimotor)
- Health
- Personal care routines
- Safety

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Innovation & Creativity

Creativity and Innovation are at the core of the VESS educational approach. Every moment and learning experience focuses on promoting these abilities, not only in the arts, but in science, mathematics, literacy, and every other developmental area. As three year olds focus more evidently in school-readiness skills (pre-reading and writing skills, and mathematics) you will never see a worksheet or photocopy in our classrooms. Instead, children write new endings to stories, document the findings of their classroom experiment in a bar graph, or complete a web map to express their thoughts.

Through our Artist of the Month, children learn about artists’ stories, techniques, and how they use colors, shapes and lines uniquely to express their emotions, inspiring children to express through art and innovate their own art techniques.

Developing children’s citizenship, inquisitiveness, scientific thinking and learning autonomy (see previous sections) fosters innovation as children feel capable of contributing and make part of a community that fosters their ideas.

Learning Autonomy

Learning autonomy refers to the skills and dispositions needed to be independent in one’s capacity to learn new things. It is seen by neuroscientists as a key determinant of life-long success and academic success.

the VESS educational approach focuses not only in learning academic content but in developing the learning autonomy to be efficient learners of future content, wherever they go.

As 3 year olds increase their capacity to express and understand complex information, they are also ready to understand their own thinking process (also known as metacognition)

Our educational program teaches academic content through Thinking Strategies that foster metacognition. These neuroscience-proven strategies include Thinking Routines, Concept Maps, and the Thinking Keys.

“Learning comes pretty easy when children understand how their thinking works” explains Ms. Julia, PK3 and PK4/5 teacher.

Citizenship

As two year olds turn three, there is a developmental shift from individual play (or parallel play) to shared play. This marks the beginning of an important mindset shift between two and three year olds.

Three year olds are active participants of our school community and are seen as global citizens capable of adding value to our world. As three year olds increase their capacity for independence and desire to contribute, our teachers focus on making them participant of classroom responsibilities, assign roles, and encourage teamwork. Daily group reflection about learning experiences is encouraged, in which teachers guide reflection through questions; children’s voices are heard and everyone participates in problem solving.

Through our monthly country and monthly unit children are exposed to the inmensity of our world, increasing their awareness of how others live and think. Through various Thinking Strategies, teachers guide children to find solutions to problems affecting the world or their direct communities.

An ultimate goal of our educational program is children capable of considering multiple perspectives and adding value wherever they go – children who are Citizens of the World – and 3 year olds are eager for the opportunity!

Higher-Level Thinking

At 3 years of age, children increase their capacity to express verbally and pose questions about the world around them. What an exciting time! With a school environment that values children’s questions about the world comes an opportunity to promote a scientific mindset. Teachers guide children to explore their questions through a multitude of strategies that develop scientific and mathematical skills that far surpass school readiness standards. Scientific processes also teach children about risk taking, persistence, teamwork, careful observation, and objectivity. They also promote literacy skills, as children are eager to record their data and what they have discovered. Some of our strategies used include:

• The Wheel of Wonder – an age-appropriate version of the scientific method that guides chuildren through a series of steps during an experiment: I wonder; I think; I try; I observe; I record; I discover.

• Thinking Routines – such as our “X routine”, which asks children to compare materials through their senses; or “I See, I think, I wonder”, which guides children to reason with evidence about their observations.

• Bar and Pie graphs – introduce children to the concepts of data analysis and data organization

• Weekly Cooking and STEM projects – that are planned based on questions that children ask in the classroom, or previously-expressed interests

By focusing on children’s interests, promoting science, experimentation, mathematics and deep thinking is simple, as children WANT to learn.

Scientific Mindset

At 3 years of age, children increase their capacity to express verbally and pose questions about the world around them. What an exciting time! With a school environment that values children’s questions about the world comes an opportunity to promote a scientific mindset. Teachers guide children to explore their questions through a multitude of strategies that develop scientific and mathematical skills that far surpass school readiness standards. Scientific processes also teach children about risk taking, persistence, teamwork, careful observation, and objectivity. They also promote literacy skills, as children are eager to record their data and what they have discovered. Some of our strategies used include:

• The Wheel of Wonder – an age-appropriate version of the scientific method that guides chuildren through a series of steps during an experiment: I wonder; I think; I try; I observe; I record; I discover.

• Thinking Routines – such as our “X routine”, which asks children to compare materials through their senses; or “I See, I think, I wonder”, which guides children to reason with evidence about their observations.

• Bar and Pie graphs – introduce children to the concepts of data analysis and data organization

• Weekly Cooking and STEM projects – that are planned based on questions that children ask in the classroom, or previously-expressed interests

By focusing on children’s interests, promoting science, experimentation, mathematics and deep thinking is simple, as children WANT to learn.

Holistic Development

We consider all children as unique individuals with multiple developmental needs. We focus on developing the whole child to their unique potential. Every experience is a learning experience carefully crafted by our teachers. We focus on multi-sensory exploration, which naturally develops your child holistically. We use a monthly artist, country and “unit of inquiry” to bring the world to the classroom through novel experiences that are exciting to our students and covers multiple developmental areas simultaneously: mathematical thinking, communication, scientific exploration, and art, as well as emotional education, thinking skills, our VESS Values, and motor skills.

Our Enrichment classes of Yoga, P.E. and Music further promote whole-child development through an area expert.

Inquisitiveness

A key goal of our educational program is to nurture autonomous, life long learners, because learning autonomy has been proven to be a key determinant of life success. Learning autonomy starts with sparking curiosity and inquisitiveness – an intrinsic desire to explore, discover and learn. How do we promote inquisitiveness?

• 3 year olds are active participants in the classroom and have a say about the topics to explore

• The Surprise Factor – a neuroscience-proven strategy that focuses on presenting experiences to children in an unexpected way that invites them to want to explore

• Respecting children’s process and celebrating risk taking: we encourage children to explore at their own pace and praise trying something hard or new.

“Surprising a child with a fascinating opportunity to explore generates engagement and emotion, getting the brain ready to really comprehend”, explains Ms. Aura, Edu1st PK3 teacher of 15 years