Curriculum

Daniel Island Academy is a private early childhood development school serving children from 1 year through 5 years. A qualified staff of teachers and assistants meet the standards required to obtain national accreditation by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Our school believes that the early childhood experiences are crucial ones for the child. To ensure the child's needs are met, we place emphasis on developmentally appropriate practices. With a careful combination of cognitive skills and developmental tasks, we create a relaxed environment that simulates both curiosity and enthusiasm for learning.

To provide a framework for our philosophy, an age-appropriate adaptation of the Creative Curriculum covering language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, world geography, art, music and movement will be used. Through collaboration with local schools our curriculum objectives will exceed the required standards for entrance into public or private five-year-old Kindergarten school programs.

Incorporated into our classroom lesson plans, will be the individual needs of each child, parent and family interests, and the teacher's own unique and creative ideas within the framework of developmentally appropriate practices.

What are developmentally appropriate practices?

DAP ensures that each child is introduced to activities and skills that meet the needs of a particular child. We start with where the child is and plan lessons and activities that will move that child toward age appropriate competencies.

How will we teach our objectives?

Young children learn best through concrete, rather than abstract, experiences. The five senses, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling are avenues for learning. By providing hands-on learning experiences based on the 5 senses, all children will be engaged in classroom activities. Appropriate regular assessments allow teachers to gain insight into each child's individual needs.

Each teacher creates their classroom schedules and lesson plans and submit them for the Director’s approval. Examples of classroom schedules and lesson plans are available in Downloads & Resources. Examples of classroom activities include ‘Small Group Time’ which gives students an opportunity for self selected activities.  In ‘Circle Time’ students learn through music and movement, fingerplays, and other special skill that they are concentrating on within that unit.

Depending on their outside time schedule, students may utilize the outdoor learning lab or transition into centers. Within centers the small groups practice creative arts, block building, and tactile lessons.

A "family style" lunch is served between 11:15 -12:00 in the classrooms and is followed by a quiet rest time. When students wake up from nap, they have outdoor play, an afternoon snack, and afternoon enrichment activities.

Mixed within each day are items such as computer time and stimulation of indoor gross motor skills. Another component is a rich study of different cultures. All students are exposed to different languages, customs, and symbols of other countries.  For example, classroom items may have labels from different languages and numbers and songs can be learned in other languages as well.

DIA Enrichment Programs

Daniel Island Academy enjoys cooperative relationships with many quality enrichment program operators. 

Both Half Day and Full Day students have the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of exciting supplemental classes.  

Here is a sample of the menu of opportunities.