Philosophy of Care
The MCA preschool program is designed to foster a love for God, a God centered self-image, confidence, competence in self-help skills and those inner controls and language abilities necessary for effective social interaction. We stress the process of learning and discovery rather than the product.
Our goal is to support children in their active explorations and help them become confident, independent and inquisitive learners. When children investigate or observe their environment, when they ask questions, when they experiment and talk about their findings, when they record them through drawings, recreate them with blocks, or interpret them through dramatic play, they are learning to understand their world. Daily activities are designed to encourage children to act upon their environment. We provide an environment rich in materials to explore, manipulate and talk about. Children are guided to question, to experiment, to think and to reason. No single area of development is stressed above another. MCA believes in fostering the growth of the whole child spiritually, emotionally, physically, socially and intellectually.
To help children develop into confident, caring, competent individuals, our program is play oriented.We at MCA believe "play is a child's work" and that through play, children acquire the foundations for reading, writing, and logical thinking. Learning through play is the preparation children need before they can understand how to use abstract symbols such as letters and numbers. Before children can understand the concept of "soft" and "hard" they need to experience "soft" and "hard" by working with play dough or building with blocks.Before they can hold a pencil or control it to make a letter on paper, they need to have developed their small muscle skills through cutting, pasting, pouring, stringing beads, kneading dough and drawing. Likewise, to understand why 1 + 3 = 4, a child needs to first have concrete experiences of counting objects, sorting them into piles, adding and removing some. In this way they acquire the foundation for logical thinking to later do math.
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