Learning Through Play

The process of playing together provides opportunities to nurture the skills and dispositions that research tells us benefits our youngest learners, such as noticing and observing, hypothesizing and questioning, listening and communicating, cooperating and collaborating. We strive to spend as much time as possible outside each day. The outdoors is a source of provocation for children’s learning because it is spontaneous, flexible, and ever changing. Our indoor learning space is thoughtfully curated, with a wide variety of sustainable and versatile materials available for children to create, construct, and imagine with each day. Through a variety of roles, the teachers at Watershed support children’s active and quiet play, indoors and out, each day.

Emergent Curriculum

Instead of doing the same projects and crafts, season after season, year after year, we engage in daily cycles of attuning to children’s interests, inquiries, and intra-actions in order to plan and facilitate a meaningful, play-based curriculum. We capitalize upon what emerges in children’s play, in their explorations outdoors, and with the people and places in their community in order to nurture growth and development within several domains: social competence, cognition, language and literacy, and physical development. This ensures that children receive an educational experience that is specific to who they are, developmentally stimulating, and culturally meaningful.