“Faites semblant, les petits.”

The Yellow Room is for toddlers ages 2 to 3 YeaRS

At two years of age, children begin to develop the ability to reason, and later, an urge to figure things out. In the Circus Room. they discovered many new things. Now, they are hungry for answers. As toddlers, they continue to develop their sense of self and independence while trying to reconcile this new self awareness with the reality of social interactions with their new “friends.”

Teachers in the Yellow Room use their knowledge of this developmental stage to balance structured seated activities with Active Play. Structured seated activities include developmentally appropriate arts and crafts projects, singing songs in English and foreign languages, story time, and letters and numbers lessons. Active Play is both structured and unstructured, indoor and outdoor, physical activity with certain benefits including—

• building strong hearts, muscles and bones.

• developing movement and coordination.

• encouraging self-esteem.

• fostering social interaction skills.

• improving thinking skills, and

• developing emotional skills

However, children do not just learn by “doing;” they also learn by pretending, so teachers in the Yellow Room work to foster their students’ imaginations and encourage pretend play, which helps their students to develop their social and emotional skills, language skills, and thinking skills.

Understanding each child’s developmental level is embedded in their teachers’ guidance and all activity planning, and parent’s consistently report that they see new-found self confidence as well as a surprising social ability in their children.

example week

A typical week begins with a s school-wide theme, for example, “Spring.” In the Yellow Room, this theme will be woven through the classroom and playground activities. On Monday, children might learn how to say "S" for the word Spring. On Wednesday, they might be taught other words which begin with “S.” Outside on the playground, the children may look for signs of spring, like the return of the birds or buds on flowering trees. And later in the week children might hear a poem about spring or enjoy a book about springtime, while an art project could include coloring a picture of a baby bird. Throughout the week, the children may learn a new song, such as "Up, Pop the Flower" (to the tune of "Pop! Goes the Weasel") and also might be encouraged to pretend how the birds would sing it.