Starlight Academy

Starlight Academy aims to prepare its students to excel as young leaders of tomorrow by combining an exclusive curriculum based on the works of Piaget, Gardner, and Erikson and comprehensive early childhood educational system that has been shown to promote the cognitive, language, social/emotional, and physical development of young children. This curriculum clearly states learning objectives to help facilitate learning in all domains with flexible programming to accommodate varied learning styles.

The Creative Curriculum is based on the latest research on how children learn best and has been shown through experimental and quasi-experimental studies to improve classroom quality and promote the school readiness of preschool children. Four rigorous independent studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of The Creative Curriculum for Preschool. Each found positive effects that range from improved classroom quality to stronger academic and social skills.

The Creative Curriculum for Infants and Toddlers:
provides a comprehensive framework that emphasizes that relationships between caregivers/teachers and children and their families form the basis of curriculum for very young children.

The Creative Curriculum for Early Childhood:
describes and demonstrates how to plan a developmentally appropriate program focusing on ten well-organized interest areas. Its underlying philosophy draws from Jean Piaget’s work on cognitive development, Erik Erikson’s stages of socio-emotional development, and accepted theories of how children learn best. The approach is practical, easy-to-understand, and immediately applicable to a variety of settings.

The philosophy behind our curriculum is that young children learn best by doing, PLAY. Learning isn’t just repeating what someone else says; it requires active thinking and experimenting to find out how things work and to learn firsthand about the world we live in.

Play provides the foundation for academic or “school” learning. It is the preparation children need before they learn highly abstract symbols such as letters (which are symbols for sounds) and numbers (which are symbols for number concepts). Play enables us to achieve the key goals of our early childhood curriculum. Play is the work of young children.

The Goals of Our Curriculum
The most important goal of our early childhood curriculum is to help children become enthusiastic learners. This means encouraging children to be active and creative explorers who are not afraid to try out their ideas and to think their own thoughts. Our goal is to help children become independent, self-confident, inquisitive learners. We’re teaching them how to learn, not just in preschool, but all through their lives. We’re allowing them to learn at their own pace and in the ways that are best for them. We’re giving them good habits and attitudes, particularly a positive sense of themselves, which will make a difference throughout their lives.