中At Hiba Academy Bay Area, our Early Years curriculum takes your child on the first steps of their lifelong learning journey. In our bilingual classrooms, students cultivate curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, confidence, and resilience. We encourage them to investigate and experience new things, face new challenges, explore their own ideas, make new connections, and celebrate their achievements along the way.
Independent Exploration
Our Pre-Kindergarten classes employ a child-led inquiry approach that promotes active learning, empowering your child to explore their interests and follow their curiosity. Our native-speaking Chinese and English teachers provide guidance and support as our students learn to tackle open-ended big questions in both languages, supporting every child to make meaningful links as they build their vocabulary and their understanding as bi-lingual learners.
The curriculum is designed as a spiral that reinforces prior learning while introducing new content to build upon that foundational knowledge. This teaches children to make connections and think critically, as they apply their learning in authentic and meaningful ways. We apply research on early bi-lingualism that tells us that language learning that is meaningful and contextual it is both more effective and more joyful for young learners. This promotes a lifelong joy of language learning.
Project-based learning, or PBL, is another key component of our Early Years curriculum. Students work together to plan, create, and present deliverables on long-term projects. This adds a social dimension as the children learn to communicate in both languages and solve problems together as a team. This inspires Hiba children to feel confident and be successful, which supports their early social learning as well as their academic learning.
Daily Life in Pre-Kindergarten
At Hiba Academy Bay Area, we believe that a well-rounded early education extends beyond the classroom. Our pre-kindergarten classrooms are designed to create a nurturing and engaging environment that supports holistic development. Here's a glimpse into how your child will spend their day:
Every child is unique. They are constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident, and self-assured.
Children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships.
Children learn and develop in enabling environments, where their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents.
Children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates.
Engaging Learning Environments
Our learning environments are designed to encourage your child to make connections in their learning. Our teachers divide them into different zones, each with a questions or challenges to explore and learn something new. These are ‘invitations to learn’ are designed to spark creativity, encourage independent learning, and support meaningful language acquisition. We balance it out with quiet, reflective spaces and areas with open-ended materials that reveal their existing knowledge while inspiring them to think creatively and collaboratively.
Additionally, our outdoor learning areas promote physical, emotional, and social growth. Through physical activity, your child will develop strength, coordination, and motor skills. They will build confidence and learn independence by taking calculated, age-appropriate risks. These outdoor experiences will also enable your child to navigate and negotiate social dynamics as they engage with their peers.
Ambitious Targets For Personalized Learning
We assess our students’ well-being and involvement with the Leuven Scale and track their progress with individual learning journals. Alongside tracking and supporting your child’s wellbeing and engagement, we introduce rigorously planned personalized academic learning targets for your child to ensure they meet their potential. This holistic approach to your child’s early learning journey ensures they are developing positive behaviours for learning that ensure ultimately transition to our Primary School, ready for success.
