PHILOSOPHY STATEMENT

The Early Childhood Program at the Singapore American School is committed to the whole child by providing learning activities that are developmentally appropriate in a stimulating, challenging, and creative environment.

The Program seeks to foster each child's intellectual, physical, emotional, social, cultural, and aesthetic growth. Our basic philosophy is that children learn best by doing. Their discovery is concrete and is based on their own experiences. The children are given opportunities to explore, experiment, and discover with hands-on materials. Their work is their play.

As well as experiential, the Early Childhood Program is child-centered and flexible. The curriculum is integrated and introduces meaningful themes which spark children's natural curiosities, interests, and enthusiasm. The program is developmental. We believe children go though sequences of growth which they each have their own individual pattern of growth, personality, and learning style. We maintain that education for young learners develops in ever widening concentric circles. Skills are sequentially built from Preschool through Kindergarten. Each year the curriculum builds upon what the children have learned the year before beginning with exposure in Preschool, to review, expansion and extension in Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten.

In our Early Childhood Program, each child is appreciated and accepted at the level of his or her own maturity and ability. The Children are given the opportunity to learn, grow, and develop in a climate of genuine affection and warmth in their own time and in their own unique way.