The curriculum is carefully planned and implemented to build self-confidence, expand understanding of math and science concepts, teach responsibility, support language and literacy development, and increase motor skills. There is a balance between both teacher facilitated and child-directed activities. Teachers are skilled in observing children and assess each child on an ongoing basis and know when the children are ready for more challenging activities.

As children's interests emerge, new curriculum activities develop and may evolve into long-term projects that continue throughout the year. Curriculum themes are used to introduce new concepts, to reinforce ideas, and to extend children's learning. Some of our curriculum topics include October's "Down on the Farm", March's "Read Across America", and January's "Animals in Winter". Our curriculum topics always include anti- bias activities, materials, and manipulatives because we are always striving to help children learn to accept others different from themselves.

The curriculum activities at the Child Development Center are based on the development of the whole child. They are aligned with the guidelines developed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children Developmentally Appropriate Practices and with the New Jersey Department of Education's Early Childhood Program Expectations: Standards of Quality. As children participate in meaningful, hands on tasks they are acquiring skills and knowledge that include but are not limited to the following:

• Mathematics skills and processes include patterning, counting, seriating, matching, estimating, classifying, sorting, graphs, and measurement, and the recognition of numbers, shape, and quantity. Curriculum activities are aligned with the preschool standards of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (http://naeyc.org/resources/position_statements/psmath.htm).
•Science knowledge and skills include observing, predicting, experimenting, caring for living and non-living things, discovery, and the use of scientific equipment.
•Prosocial behavior skills include cooperation, sharing, problem solving and taking turns.
•Language and Literacy skills and processes include speaking, listening, retelling, comprehension, vocabulary, letters, associating pictures with environmental print words, and pre-emergence of reading and writing skills. Curriculum activities are aligned with the position statement of the International Reading Association and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (http://naeyc.org/resources/position_statements/psread98.pdf).
•Small and Large Muscle Skills include the development and control of both small and large muscles, and understanding physical properties such as an awareness of space, coordination, strength, and endurance.