Elementary

Resources

Our special resources include art, music and movement, physical education, an onsite garden, Dinosaur School, and access to a TimberNook program

Art
“Art can permeate the very deepest part of us, where no words exist.”      ― Eileen Miller, The Girl Who Spoke with Pictures: Autism Through Art  

Art is an outlet for self expression, imagination, and creativity. Children construct their knowledge of the world and discover possibilities by seeing and feeling a variety of materials. Realizing they can control or manipulate artistic media (paint, crayons, clay) gives way to meaning making and establishing a personal language in their artwork. Growth in the core areas of child development weaves alongside artistic development. Verbalizing their thoughts or actions supports visual language development as your child begins to connect to their artistic experiences.

Benefits of Art include:

• Nurtures emotional and mental growth
• Builds life skills such as independence and collaboration 
• Promotes improvement of cognitions, visual and spatial discrepancies, fine motor skills, and coping.

Music and Movement
Music is a language we all share.

Listening to and playing music during childhood has positive effects on learning, and is just plain fun! As with language development, young ears learn music naturally through simple exposure to songs and rhythms. With regular exposure, music will become as second-nature to your child as walking and talking. Children audiate, hear music in their heads, long before music making begins.Our students enjoy a wide array of percussion instruments (xylophones, shakers, drums) as well as many international (talking drum, seed rattle, rainstick) and traditional instruments (recorder, guitar, piano).

Benefits of music include:

• Encourages fine and gross motor development through repetition and movement as they shake a tambourine, pick a guitar, or twirl in the air
• Developing social interactions and friendships as they laugh, dance, and play instruments alongside their peers

Physical Education
“There needs to be a lot more emphasis on what a child can do instead of what he cannot do.” – Dr. Temple Grandin

Physical Education helps children to discover and explore a diverse selection of activities that promote a lifelong healthy lifestyle. Our curriculum includes opportunities in physical, social, and emotional health education. The encouragement of risk taking, problem solving, choice, and self challenge afford children an opportunity to learn about themselves in a safe and supportive environment.

Benefits of exercise include: 

• Improvement in cognitive performance and learning
• Improvement in attention span, focus, and problems involving responses
• Development of motor coordination and skills 
• Decreases disruptive behaviors 
• Decrease repetitive behaviors 
• Improves overall health and wellness

The Garden
Inspire students’ natural curiosity and wonder with hands-on learning experiences and inquiry-based exploration.

Gardening offers many benefits to children. It is a purposeful activity involving mind and body, and it is valued by society. Gardening not only promotes healthy lifestyles in children, but has also been shown to improve children’s behavior and performance at school, improve their attitudes about, and appreciation for the environment. Gardens serve as great outdoor classrooms for a variety of subjects including science, math, creative writing and art. The garden is a wonderful space for kids with different learning styles and abilities to work in groups and engage in hands-on, cross-disciplinary education.

Benefits can include: 

• Improved fine and gross motor skills
• Improved communication and socialization skills
• Enhanced self-esteem and a sense of responsibility 
• An interest in their health and the environment 
• Stimulation of sensory perception, creativity, and curiosity

Dinosaur School
Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best” Bob Talber

The Incredible Years DINA Classroom Curriculum is a child training curriculum that strengthens children’s social, emotional and academic competencies such as understanding and communicating feelings, using effective problem solving strategies, managing anger, practicing friendship and conversational skills, as well as appropriate classroom behaviors. This program is taught by trained therapists and used by the teachers as a social program for an entire classroom of students.   http://www.incredibleyears.com/programs/child/classroom-curriculum/

Benefits of Dinosaur School include: 

• Reduce children’s aggressive and disruptive behavior  
• Increase prosocial behavior 
• Increase positive conflict management skills and social skills when interacting with peers and teachers  
• Increase problem solving strategies and increased emotion literacy on assessments

TimberNook

Most importantly, TimberNook reveals the fun in outdoor play.
      Our students do everything from re-creating stories in nature to building elaborate designs and structures out in the woods to having enchanted forest. Unstructured free play is incorporated into every day, and children take the lead. Collage is a licensed provider of Timbernook.com
“Nature is the ultimate sensory experience.” — Angela Hanscom, MOT, OTR/L (Founder and CEO, TimberNook)
TimberNook intricately weaves the therapeutic aspects of nature with its unique understanding of child development to create an outdoor program that supports every aspect of the growing child. Every TimberNook setting and activity is carefully analyzed for its therapeutic value. Each activity provides the opportunity for children to utilize all of their senses to the fullest. 

Timbernook encourages:

• Complex social interactions
• Reasonable risk-taking
• Problem solving
• Fine motor skills, balance and overall strength
• Independent thought
• Tactile (touch) processing
• Proprioceptive (joint/muscle awareness) processing
• Multilevel learning
• Motor planning
• Creativity

Functional Academics 

Our functional academic program addresses areas that will be used by the student for the rest of their life. These are skills that will have meaning for the child and will help them be as independent as possible. 

Examples:

• Reading (read signs; read a recipe, etc) 
• Math (money, grocery shopping, making change, budgeting,etc) 
• Health (grooming; oral hygiene; play healthy meals, etc) 
• Time Management Skills (calendar skills, telling time, reading the date) 
• Computer Skills (using interactive and assistive computer devices & software when needed) 
• Center Activities- fine motor skills 
• Participate in Volunteer work (following directions)

Curricula Used