Developmentally Appropriate Practice & Curriculum
A&D Stars follows developmentally appropriate practice. We believed that each child is an individual with his/her own rate and style of learning and growing. We endeavor to teach character traits and equip children with the developmental skills through intentionally planned, play-based environments and curriculum while at the same time allowing enough flexibility to respond to each child’s individual needs. Our teachers plan the day, week, or month’s theme with specific goals in mind, using Creative Curriculum (Maryland State-Recommended Curricula for Early Childhood Programs) as a base structure and supplementing with other high-quality curricula. Themes for the year are intentionally planned to include opportunities for integrating key areas of content, including life, earth and physical science, as well as social studies and the arts.
We believe that young children best learn by guided exploration through play with some direct instruction. At A&D Stars, children participate in a wide variety of hands-on active exploration that encourages them to be active learners, to lead, to follow, to listen, to appreciate differences, to solve conflicts, to count, to reason, to create, and to use their muscles. We are committed to a strong emphasis on phonological and phonemic awareness skills and use a variety of resources to build literacy into our program.