At The Global Child Bethel, teachers & staff help children reach learning and developmental goals. Founded and currently owned by mom & former teacher Virginia Brown, The Global Child operates four centers in Connecticut, with Fairfield County’s first location being in Bethel. Virginia spent 24 years in the Public School System in Connecticut focusing on Early Childhood Education as a kindergarten teacher, special education teacher, principal, and director of special education. In 2011, she founded The Global Child with the goal of creating a center that would put parents’ minds at ease while providing an educational and enriching experience for their children. Today, she shares her thoughts on Curriculum development in Early Childhood Education, why it’s important, and more on The Global Child’s programs.
It feels like many don’t think of curriculum and structured learning for our youngest children, but in actuality it is important since they change so quickly during early childhood. Why is Curriculum important for our earliest learners?
Curriculum is not only important for early childhood schools but, essential because it ensures that children have exposures and experiences to develop age appropriate milestones that they need for Kindergarten and beyond. Studies show that young children who possess Kindergarten readiness skills in the academic and social/emotional areas experience much greater school and life success. Children ages birth to 6 weeks are incredibly receptive to learning and their brains are developing very quickly, therefore a curriculum designed for young children that has an assessment aligned with it guides our skilled teachers to create learning opportunities that meet and often exceed children’s needs.
Can you share more about the Curriculum at The Global Child School? How is it developed? How does it change based on a child’s age.
At The Global Child we use Connecticut’s Early Learning Development Standards (ELDS) created by the Office of Early Childhood as a guide to develop our very own proprietary curriculum for our students. While ELDS offers our teachers resources for their lesson planning and daily activities, The Global Child curriculum is designed specifically to meet a child’s developmental needs by targeting what a child should know and be able to do at each age. Our enriched learning goes beyond numbers and letters, it’s about new opportunities, skills and engagement for each and every one of our students!
You integrate Spanish into the program for children starting at infancy. Can you share a bit more about the program you use?
Spanish is integrated into our children’s daily experiences and activities. We use a program called Zid Zid kids www.zidzidkids.com which supports Spanish enrichment through books, songs and activities. It’s important that this is part of our curriculum because incorporating another language into our daily activities gives The Global Child children a whole host of advantages such as increased cognitive skills, gross and fine motor skills and socio-emotional growth, all while remaining true to our play-based curriculum.
In 2011, Virginia Brown founded The Global Child. The school’s 3rd location is in Bethel at 15 Park Lawn Drive. If you are interested in learning more about the programs at Bethel center, please contact Sue Canfield by phone at (203) 798-0015 to set up your tour. Currently, The Global Child operates four schools throughout Connecticut (Stonington, Norwich, Bethel, & Ledyard) and is expanding through franchising opportunities. If you’d like to learn more about opening a location in your town, please contact Virginia at: [email protected]. You can also, click here for more information.
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