Call Us: 503-255-1056
Call Us: 503-255-1056
Educational Philosophy
At Higher Elevations Learning Place we believe that learning and growth development come from the hard work of pushing our limits and challenging ourselves. We create a play-based curriculum that creates moments that challenge our children to stretch their abilities and grow and learn in the skill arenas of social, physical, cognitive, and emotional regulation.
This approach creates a balance of sprinkling in activities that children cannot yet successfully navigate with many moments of reminding them about all the skills they have already mastered. Creating confident children who hunger for moments of challenge and love the hard work that comes with virtually all of life’s successes. We draw on resources of Creative Curriculum, elements of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and research approaches developed by Angela Duckworth in our practice. This promotes a child that equates learning with fun and honors their emotions and feelings and teaches skills of mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation and hard work.
Infants & Wobblers
Higher Elevation Learning Place believes in partnering with families to build a successful framework for infant development. We will work closely to understand family goals and challenges to help develop a schedule that works for the infant, the family, and the center. This framework is created on routines developed around daily activities that create routine stability and introduce learning in everyday moments such as hellos, goodbyes, and diaper changes.
We put a strong emphasis on having a high volume of language and speaking with our infants respectfully. Telling them ahead of time what is going to happen and honoring them by providing lots of ways to explore their environment by playing with toys, imitating and pretending and experiencing stories and books. As our infants transition to wobblers we are looking to stretch there limits by working on gross motor and early language skills and developing more opportunity for exploration of their environment through activities such as playing with toys, dabbling in art, experiencing music and movement and outdoor play.
Toddlers
The Creative Curriculum approach for Toddlers rests heavily on routines and experiences. Our responsive care and teaching help enable our Toddlers to develop a secure attachment with the important people in their lives and wiring their brains to be lifelong learning. There is so much to learn at this age that every diapering/toileting, and mealtime build on their growing skills.
Our routine and play-based approach helps our toddlers develop social, physical, language and cognitive growth. We begin to introduce simple mindfulness and distress tolerance skills at this age. Getting a toddler to learn to wait and to help them by naming and honoring emotions is some of the early ways we work on mindfulness with our Toddlers
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Preschool
We believe the best way to help our preschoolers succeed is to teach them to be creative, confident thinkers by offering them opportunities for hands-on exploration and discovery that build lifelong critical thinking skills and foster confidence.
We have weekly mindfulness and distress tolerance skills focus for these kiddos to help develop their social and emotional skills. We work at naming feelings, noticing through non-judgmental language to help our preschoolers develop the ability to calm their emotions so learning and growth can take place.