Our Curriculum.

At Laurel Heights Weekday School, we believe all children have unique backgrounds and experiences, which influence how they learn and their activities of choice. We are happy to provide a well-balanced curriculum that not only focuses on academic learning, progress, and growth, but is also centered around recognizing God’s love. Ultimately, our goal is to work with all families in order to help your child reach his or her full potential.

Laurel Heights Weekday School is dedicated to providing a safe and nurturing environment that promotes the physical, social, emotional, cognitive, language, creative and spiritual development of young children. The developmental domains are addressed daily in the classroom. The curriculum is sequential within the class and from one classroom to the next.

The school incorporates child development knowledge to identify the range of appropriate behaviors, activities, and materials for a specific age group. This knowledge is used in conjunction with understanding the individual child’s growth patterns, strengths, interests, and experiences in order to design the most appropriate learning environment. Therefore, the content and teaching strategies are both age and individually appropriate, within reason.

We believe that children learn best through play with classmates, classroom equipment, and materials. Concrete experiences and exploration provide authentic learning that is meaningful to the child and sets the foundation for more abstract concepts. A balance of staff initiated and child-initiated activities occur throughout the day. Teachers are encouraged to integrate all curriculum areas through language and literacy, as well as outdoor learning. Although, it may look different for different age groups, each class provides whole group learning time. For preschoolers, this might be learning about patterns, participating in a read-aloud, or developing an understanding that every letter has a corresponding sound. For younger children, whole group time may include singing a song or chant with hand motions, acting out a story with puppets, or practicing a self-help skill as a group. Additionally, all children will be exposed daily to self-directed play-based centers and small group learning time with the teacher.

The written curriculum is also based on formal assessment and teacher observation of the individual child. Standards from the state of Texas for birth through 3 year olds and pre-kindergarten, in addition to the Pre-kindergarten Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills are used to set goals and objectives for the children. The teacher uses a thematic and/or Project Approach curriculum. The themes and project topics are selected based on the children’s interests and teacher selection which all must be worthy of study, meaningful to the children, and culturally sensitive. The teachers use the topics that are age appropriate to develop their weekly lesson plans. The teachers are encouraged to incorporate areas of interest expressed by the children in their class. Using these topics, whether selected by the teacher or by the children, activities are planned and centers are prepared to promote development. In addition to classroom and playground activities, children attend enrichment classes in Chapel, and Gym. Extra Curricular Activities are available to children, during their regularly scheduled day, who choose to enroll in these additional programs. We currently offer Ballet & Tap, Soccer Shots, and Karate. Families receive information on these additional programs from the school office and sign up online with the separate entities.

As mentioned above, Laurel Heights Weekday School values religious activities as part of the total curriculum. Chapel services are designed to develop children's awareness of God's love and care, and to help children respond to God's love in praise and thanksgiving. The respect and care shown to children in all of the school's activities seeks to communicate love as a way to live with others.

Meeting the children at their individual level and challenging them to be creative, to express their ideas, to mature emotionally, socially, physically, and spiritually, to behave in an acceptable manner, and to feel good about themselves and their ability to learn, is the daily endeavor of all our staff.