At Edgewood Academy, we believe that children learn best through direct experiences and interaction with people and the natural world around them and offer an environmentally friendly program. While emphasizing the development of the whole child, we are focusing on strengthening cognitive skills, gross and fine motor skills, language, and communication skills through active, hands-on learning experiences where nature-related experiences play one of the most important roles.
Today, many young children have limited opportunities for such experiences. Many of them, regardless of where they live, spend most of their time in settings and activities that keep them essentially isolated from direct contact with the natural world.
At Edgewood Academy, we believe that nature-related experiences play a critical role in shaping life-long attitudes, values, and patterns of behavior towards people and the world, that it is an integral part of healthy child development, and that children should form a sense of respect and caring for the natural environment during the first years of their life. Nature-related experiences foster a child’s sense of wonder and joy of discovery; they nurture imagination and stimulate learning in general.
At Edgewood Academy, we provide children with sufficient opportunities for positive experiences with the natural environment both indoors and outdoors. Classrooms are filled with natural educational resources to create a stimulating environment for children to explore and create. In addition to learning about the elements of the natural world through books, arts and crafts projects, dramatic play, show and tell and other indoor activities children are involved in ongoing daily experiences with the natural world outdoors. We recognize the importance of outdoor learning to children’s early childhood education and emotional well-being. Our playgrounds and outdoor classrooms are surrounded by fruit trees, flower and vegetable gardens, bird feeders and butterfly houses, feeders for squirrels, rock piles, and windsocks providing children with plenty of opportunities for investigating nature and building a sense of connectedness with plants and animals.