(EARLY YEARS)

Discovery Home Learning Support

for 2-4 year olds

Discovery At Home

Why distance learning for 2, 3, and 4-year-olds?

At Discovery, we know that a strong foundation in the early years sets up a child for life long success - it is one of the core reasons Discovery exists!

Every child deserves to progress towards their annual curriculum targets including their personal social and emotional development (especially in this challenging season).

Our goal in this season is to bridge children to their annual curriculum targets using an innovative teacher-parent partnership approach.

We did it successfully in the period from May to October 2020 and we are ready to do it even better throughout this academic year as the need may arise.

Discovery teachers partner with parents in a targeted collaboration that accelerates children's progress right in the safety of their homes.

Learning is designed to be self-paced. Weekly guidelines, videos, activities, and printed material will be available for parents to use whenever they are free to work with their children.
For ages 2 and 3: children will video conference in small groups 2 times a week
For age 4, children will video conference 1 to 2 times every day except for Wednesday
Every child will have a 1 to 1 session with their teacher every week
Young children will not go on video conferences for several hours every day because it is not developmentally appropriate for them.
Instead, teachers and parents will leverage meaningful adult-child interactions and the home environment to provide authentic hands-on learning experiences for the children

EY Distance Learning - Sample schedules

Teachers design targeted activities to meet the learning objectives of the curriculum and support parents to help their children practise.
Where necessary, parent-teacher phone calls or video conferences will be held to further support families regarding any challenges they may face. These will mostly take place during or after the weekly 1 to 1 student sessions
Teachers will also provide simple hands-on material to support learning at home.
All learning activities and guidelines are posted on our online platform for parents to support children to work at their pace and to fit within the family routines.
Teachers will continue to provide consistent support and are available to parents to answer any questions they may have.

Hands-on math at home

Letter names and sounds

Art

What should early years' families expect during school closure?

Weekly guidelines for child development activities

Activities to develop oral expression and confidence

Foundational skills for reading

Foundational skills for math

Activities for fine motor and gross motor skills

Art and other activities across our 7 learning domains

Learning packs with ready-to-go activities (when possible)

Weekly connection with classmates (teacher-guided live sessions)

Confidence building guidance

Sequenced preparation for the following term and the next class

Stacking for fine motor skill development

Math work as per instructions in SeeSaw

Geometry and sequencing

Distance learning for 2-4-year-olds is:

Self-paced and flexible

Personalised and targeted

Consistent and hands-on

Child-friendly and care-giver-guided

Teacher-designed and very effective

Some of the learning targets for this academic year

Reading by the end of this academic year: For 4-year-olds, teachers will be working on helping children read by the end of this academic year
The 4s will be taught sequenced lessons to make sure they are reading words or small books by the end of this year
Math fluency foundation: Our 4-year-olds will receive sequenced lessons for number fluency to ensure understanding concepts of addition and subtraction by the end of this year
3-year-olds will work on letter-sound recognition, writing their name, quantity and number recognition to 20+
3-year-olds will continue to expand their expressive language, self-regulation skills and building their attention span to start and complete tasks
Discovery children begin to transition to the primary section at age 5
4-year-olds will be transitioning to the primary curriculum every September - this academic year is very important preparation for them

TIPS TO MAKE IT THROUGH SCHOOL CLOSURE!

1. Engage your child's teacher daily

In a bid to support you with the learning and ongoing progress of your young child, we have designed schedules that enable more time to consult the teacher. You can use this time to ask questions and get tips/advice.

Please continue to reach out to your teacher for support whenever you need to or to a member of the leadership team whose contact details are available in your class WhatsApp group or on the website.

2. Check SeeSaw and WhatsApp daily

We urge you to please check Seesaw and WhatsApp every day.

It’s always exciting for the teachers to see the children’s learning products; videos and photographs are so helpful for the teacher to continue to track your child’s progress and to pinpoint the areas that your child is doing well in and those that s/he needs more practice to master.

3. Keep sessions short and fun for your child

Please remember to help your child to learn at-home in short sessions that are fun and stress-free.

You can choose the time for the activities to work within your own schedule.

For more on why and how distance learning works for little ones - please click here!