Child Development

For young children, art and early writing skills go hand in hand. At first, your child will start experimenting with crayons and the cool things that they can do. Children often start to develop early writing skills through creating art, such as scribbles and begin to imitate the act of writing by symbolic marking and drawings that express their thoughts and ideas. These early writing skills are called emergent writing. Emergent writing is your child’s first attempt at the writing process. The development of emergent writing skills, such as writing their own name are important for setting...

Will my child be on the same academic level as his classmates? Will he be able to make new friends? Will he know how to let his teacher know what he needs? Parents with perspective kindergarteners have many concerns as their child embarks on his first year of formal schooling. In the stress and rigor of modern education, parents often wonder if their child is prepared for kindergarten.   What determines School Readiness for an up and coming student? An earlier generation defined school readiness as whether or not a child is five years old. In recent years, however, stat...

Stepping Stone School is excited to announce a wonderful addition to our Platinum Learning for Life Curriculum™ for our Advanced Pre-Kindergarten classes: School to Home Connection Folders! The addition of these at-home learning and communication tools is supported by research which states, “Meaningful family engagement in children’s early learning supports school readiness and later academic success. Parental involvement is a critical element of high-quality early care and education” (Snow, 2012). School to Home Connection folders provide an educational link between learning whi...

Vocabulary development begins in infancy and is the foundation on which children’s language and literacy skills are built. Research shows that the size of a child’s vocabulary is a strong indicator of future school success. At Stepping Stone School, your children develop vocabulary through developmentally appropriate planning, interactions and instruction from their teachers. Infants & Young Toddlers:  The very youngest are spoken to in soft, high tones that draw attention. Their teachers ensure that the children see their mouths while talking and that their actions correspon...

Our curriculum incorporates American Sign Language into all of our classrooms. We know that children build confidence as they increase their ability to communicate in signs. This leads to a greater confidence in oral communication as well. And, as in learning any language, it fosters a greater understanding and appreciation for the culture of that language. Signing is a kinetic act that stimulates activity in both the right brain, which is responsible for visual-spatial reasoning and long-term memory, and the left brain, which is responsible for processing language. When we sign wi...