Little Dumplings Early Learning Center believes the first few years of a child’s life are by far the most important, helping to lay the foundation for all intellectual and emotional development. We strive to provide a nurturing environment which gives individualized attention. We take great care to provide a warm, friendly, and fun environment for your child, while ensuring they receive the guidance and structure they need. We believe a child learns best by being actively engaged with their environment. They do this through observation and exploration with objects and people in their environment. Our professional teaching staff will guide the children with age-appropriate activities in the centers and help facilitate their learning by asking open ended questions to gage the child’s understanding and to challenge the children as well. Our approach is a problem-solving one that allows the child to learn through centers that are age appropriate for each classroom. These centers are child-oriented and encourage the child to learn with a hands-on approach. We also include play into our curriculum to help children make connections to their outside world. Play is a very important part of each child’s growth and development. Through play children learn to: build confidence, feel loved, be happy and safe, develop social/ language/communication skills, learn about caring for others and the environment, develop physical skills, connect and refine pathways to their brain, and are able to express their feelings and emotions. Each child is a unique individual and we will encourage the developmental growth of their individual personality by encouraging individuality and giving positive praise and encouragement.

Through the interactions of parents, teacher, and child; our staff create lessons that are guided by the 5 domains of WMELS-Wisconsin Model Early Learning Standards, which is aligned with our State Licensing Education Standards.

These standards have 5 developmental domains that guide our teachers into making their planning more intentional and individual.

The five developmental domains are:

♦ Health and physical development

♦ Social and emotional development

♦ Language development and communication

♦ Approaches to learning

♦ Cognition and general knowledge

Our teachers make observations of each child and are able to make individual learning goals based upon these observations. Our teachers then develop lessons that will best meet these goals and record their observations. We compile many photos and documentation to add to each child’s portfolio. These portfolios are then shared with the families.

Hands on Learning

Little Dumplings Early Learning Center believes the best way to learn is through hands on experiences. For example, if you are learning about apples, it is better to be able to experience a real apple. You have an opportunity to use your five senses to: touch it, taste it, smell it, see it, and hear it. They might use math (cognitive) to measure it or count the seeds. They are using science (cognitive) to talk about the growing cycle. They can use their fine motor skills (physical) to pick up the seeds. They will often use language to discuss the topic. Perhaps they have to work in pairs to complete another lesson (social).

DAP-Developmentally Appropriate Practices

In all things we do, we make sure to always use developmentally appropriate practices. This means we gear the lessons to meet each child’s individual goals and abilities. Children can become easily frustrated if the lesson is too difficult or even too easy. Lessons are planned intentionally to include each child’s strengths and weaknesses.

Learning through play

Play is an important part of a child’s growth and development.

Through play, children learn a variety of life skills, such as:

♦ building confidence

♦ feel loved, happy, and safe

♦ develop social skills, language, and communication

♦ learn about caring for others and the environment

♦ develop physical skills

♦ connect and refine pathways to their brain so they are able to express their feelings and emotions