Discovery Gardens believes that a child is capable and competent at all ages of life. We focus on the child as a whole and build our programs to meet all ages and developmental stages with the child in mind. Discovery Gardens also places a great deal of emphasis on our school readiness program, making sure each child has acquired the skills needed to meet, if not exceed, school readiness benchmarks.
From their initial smiles on their first day attending Discovery Gardens to their first day of kindergarten, Discovery Gardens works with children by focusing both on building a foundation of learning and cultivating social and emotional skills. Our warm, nurturing and loving environments make Discovery Gardens a safe place for children to explore, investigate, ask questions and learn.
It is known that children learn in different ways, and that what works for one child may not work for another. Discovery Gardens focuses on creating classrooms and teaching to meet all types of learning styles, while making sure that all children are able to be involved and enjoy their time learning. We firmly believe that if a child is enjoying what they do, they will retain what they are learning without necessarily knowing that they are learning.
With the owner being trained in Early Childhood Development, she was inspired by Reggio Emilia, which helped her to develop the Creative Curriculum, and Head Start programs as well as the ideas of various other prominent educational theorists, we have been able to implement our program with the understanding that children need time to learn and develop their skills. We know that giving children many opportunities to learn skills through repetition, as well as expand their knowledge by adding something new into an activity or project, makes a world of difference both in how they are able to process new information and their general willingness to learn.
We believe in learning through our five senses, so children at Discovery Gardens are able to experience many types of activities such as playing in the dirt, splashing in water, painting, running and dancing, listening to music, building with blocks, planting real things, playing with cars and trains, imagining with puppets and dress up activities, experimenting with science projects, and even cooking – just to name a few. Our enriched literacy program also offers children a head start toward mastering language, reading and writing skills. Children touch real objects, see changes unfold in their surroundings, smell a variety of smells, taste new and different foods, and practice listening to each other along with the different sounds in the environment like the raceway, airplanes overhead, nearby trains and cars, as well as birds, squirrels, and neighborhood pets.
We incorporate our teaching techniques in our day-to-day interaction with the children, and consistently focus on helping to guide them in understanding their feelings, being able to communicate about their feelings, making sense of their surroundings, and help them think about and answer their own questions. Discovery Gardens also understands that when children are done, they are done! We make sure that multiple choices are always available for children, and that we are able to adjust activities and environments to better match what the children are interested in at a given time to make their learning both interesting and fun.
Discovery Gardens enrolls children as early as 6 weeks old. An initial family screening is conducted upon enrollment, regardless of age, so that the teachers can get an understanding of where each child is at developmentally when coming in. In Las Vegas this is done using Brigance and in Portland using ASQ. Also, this screening will be followed up by biannual parent-teacher conferences that happen every six months. These are held in December and July. As long as your child has been enrolled for at least three months then they will be eligible to participate in these conferences. Here, the parents can receive in depth updates on how their child has improved, and any struggles they may be facing at that point.
