Parent Aware

Kind Roots Early Learning & Care is currently a star rated program from Parent Aware.  

Parent Aware Ratings are based on demonstrated use of practices that best prepare children for kindergarten.   

The Kind Roots educational philosophy is to treat each child as an individual. We want to set each child up for a strong educational journey and we do this by providing tons of time for play. Through play children our able to master their “Root Skills”.  We want to help these children establish well-rooted beginnings to make them well-grounded individuals. What are these skills we dedicate our learning too?

“Root Skills” 

Motor Skills

Basic Classroom Practices

Social Skills

Executive Function OR Self-regulation

Sensory Input 

Creativity 

Resilience

These are the skills that children are working on from birth until about age 8. During this time their brains and bodies are developing at an extremely rapid pace. Children are working on these skills constantly at Kind Roots. Forming the root of their educational tree. Root skills are what set up a grounded start to any child’s educational journey. 

Think of a child as a new oak tree seedling. One of the first things they need to do is to grow a strong and stable set of roots. If these are not established as children then when they are older… let’ s say middle school… they will be totally unstable and unable to stand steady in their journey through school. 

If we send them to kindergarten with a solid set of ROOT SKILLS they are going to grow strong and steady. Completely grounded, comfortable and confident in who they are and what they can do. 

At kind roots the children are working on these skills in a natural way. They are never forced. We do this by offering them a curriculum and environment that we know will help foster their curiosity, adventure and will challenge them with a few problems to solve on their own.

Being outdoors; playing, they are their own teacher. 

Now let’s go over what exactly these ROOT SKILLS are:

Fine Motor Skills

These are small actions that we make with our bodies. Such as grasping and manipulating objects with our hands. Think of how many ways we do this during the day. Writing, cutting, folding, zipping, eating these are all vital to daily life!

Gross Motor Skills

These are the large movements that our bodies make. Running, jumping, sitting in a chair. And they are all important parts of everyday life. They are also important parts of play! 

Basic Classroom Practice

We are talking about circle time, standing in line, Serving their own food, opening the containers and packages, then cleaning lunch up and putting it away themselves. Taking clothing off and putting it back on. Deciding if they are too warm or cold and expressing that fact.  We refer to these as “human skills”. 

Social Skills 

Interacting with other humans that are not related to you is something that has to be practiced. Sitting through a story without interrupting, speaking in front of a group of other children, asking non parental adults for help, expressing their needs and opinions, giving and asking for consent, speaking up when someone hurts them, having a give and take conversation, patience and empathy, interacting with their peers without parental interaction is a huge leap for a lot of kids. Finally doing all of these things helps fine tune a process that most people do not think of… Auditory Processing, this means all of the listening and the connections our brain makes to determine the volume in which we speak! 

Executive Function OR self-regulation

So important, and not always discussed! To sum this up I have a quote from the publication “Thriving Through Nature” by Chiara D’Amore on the Children & Nature Network

“The term executive function is generally agreed to refer to an inter‐related set of mental processes that allow people to retain and work with information, focus attention, filter out distractions, problem solve, and shift mental gears. Three primary dimensions of executive function are widely understood to be working memory, self‐control, and mental flexibility. Housed primarily in the prefrontal cortex, these brain functions are highly interrelated—operating in coordination with one another for successful achievement of the executive skills required in a given situation.  “

This is that all important self-regulation that we hear experts talk about all of the time! These are super hard functions to master, and humans are not born with them. It is incredibly important that children are given the chance to master these skills as they are a huge factor in being able to pay attention to lessons, and then be able to retain what you have been learning during them. Birth to age 6 is one of the most important times for children to form all of the connections and do the work needed to have strong executive functions.

Sensory Input

We all know our five senses. Sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste. Did you know that there is a 6th sense? It is called proprioception and it is the sense of where your body is and how it is moving through space. Mainly it utilizes joint pressure to do this and the best way to sharpen it is to move in many different ways and directions as possible all of the time.… Also getting plenty of vestibular input helps with this. That means kids are rolling down hills, hanging upside down and spinning for a reason. Do you have a kid who is crashing into everything? They are probably searching for Vestibular input! Vestibular input through tons of movement also helps strengthen our sight and gross motor skills! If children are not presented with many varied sensory experiences to dive into at an early age their senses and sensory tolerance can be underdeveloped and they can struggle with situations such as being wet or cold to the point it becomes a real issue in their life. Basically, being uncomfortable and not panicking takes practice!

Creativity

Open ended opportunities to create without instructions or judgments allow children the confidence to voice their ideas, follow through with projects and think outside of the box to solve problems. We set up frequent invitations to create process art. This means we set out supplies in a certain way that allows children freedom to create whatever comes to their mind. There are no directions to make a certain object. There is no product to be worked towards. Process art not only helps children with becoming artists, but with becoming stellar problem solvers later in life. 

and FINALLY

Resilience

School is a ton of physical and mental work. Children come home totally exhausted at the end of the day. This makes it hard to connect with them and enjoy your evening. We have found that kids that are outside more are doing WAY better with this. They are already used to moving for large chunks of time, following directions and all of the other ROOT SKILLS.  They are not totally exhausted by diving into academics, and trying to catch up on ROOT SKILL work at the same time.