Mission and Message: To strengthen families through education and to offer support for parents as they provide the best possible home environment for the healthy growth and development of their children. The task of parenting is important. Teeny Tiny recognizes and supports parents’ understanding of their children, as well as their parental roles. What parents do to guide and nurture their own children along with their skills in working with others who share responsibility for their child’s development (teachers, schools and other in the community) is critical to each child’s future and the future of our nation.
We believe that a child learns best in an atmosphere of love, warmth and acceptance. Our teachers listen to children, allow them to take the initiative, and yet guide them in productive and non- competitive ways.
Our program is founded on the belief that all children have great potential, are curious, and interested in constructing their own learning. We encourage positive peer and social relations, development of critical thinking skills, and facilitate the development of self- esteem by fostering independence and problem-solving skills.
We further believe that parents are a child's first and primary teachers and we enhance and support parents in this important role.
It is important to remember that development is a journey, not a race. Children benefit from the individual, measured pacing of the journey, not from achieving developmental milestones at the earliest opportunity. We offer only
developmentally appropriate activities for the children and will not push beyond what they are comfortable doing.
Jean Piaget generally is recognized as the leader in the field of early childhood education in the research and understanding of a child's development. From ages two to seven, a child is developing many of the cognitive skills that are the foundation for all formal learning. Attempts to hurry a child's cognitive development are not worthwhile: Piaget's research documents that the stages of cognitive development cannot be skipped, nor is it possible to speed through them. While most children at the youngest ages are able to memorize and recite, these skills do not represent meaningful learning in the preschool years. In our setting, we encourage deep and complex thinking. This fosters the tendency in children to be curious, to wonder, investigate then to question, study, and analyze so they can think critically. This is true preparation for lifelong learning. “Academics” are very much embedded within our daily work. They are found in both the ordinary moments of our day and in the project work that we may do.
Children have a real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time we try to teach them something too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves.
~ Jean Piaget