Philosophy & Goals

The philosophy of Kids Depot is to provide a developmentally appropriate program for young children that fosters the whole child concept, respects each child as an individual and stimulates a child’s natural interest in, and enjoyment of, learning. We believe that given the opportunity, all children have natural abilities to thrive and grow; we applaud our parents for giving them that opportunity by bringing them to our schools.

Our long-term program goals include helping children:

To become creative, independent thinkers;
To feel competent, productive and self-reliant, as well as fostering good self esteem and a sense of self worth;
To develop a sense of responsibility for their own mental and physical health;
To understand that they are a part of a diverse, multicultural global community and that their actions influence the quality of that community;
To foster the value that many kinds of intelligence – linguistic, logical/mathematical, musical, physical, spatial and personal – are valuable and important to our community; and,
To encourage the development of higher moral reasoning, helping children to develop into adults with an internalized code of ethics and principles.

Kids Depot’s daily classroom practice and programming objectives will be designed to support the program’s philosophy and the established long-term goals. Our educational philosophy is supported by our curriculum, as well as by the teachers, families, and parents involved in the program, providing role models for our children. It is critical, then, for parents to choose a program with an educational philosophy that matches and supports their family values and their goals for their child.

We respect and believe in each child as a unique individual with the ability to construct knowledge about themselves, others, and the world around them through active learning.

We are committed to lower child-to-teacher ratios and smaller class sizes to enable teachers to: Spend more time with each child, developing closer teacher-child bonds of affection, trust and respect; Assess carefully each child’s social, emotional, cognitive, and physical growth and progress to individualize the program accordingly; Work with children in small groups.

The program at Kids Depot is based on early childhood theory and accepted practices developed historically within the field of early childhood education by educators and researchers such as Froebel, Montessori, Piaget, Brazelton and White. Each of these, and many other theorists and practitioners has contributed to the body or knowledge that early childhood teachers use to guide a young child’s growth and development. Jean Piaget, for example, is recognized as a leader in the field of early childhood education in the research and understanding of a child’s cognitive (intellectual) development. Based on his findings, we are greatly concerned with the process of learning. From ages two through seven years, a child is developing many of the cognitive skills that are critical to the foundation of formal learning. Piaget’s research documents; that the cognitive stages of development, which a child experiences as s/he grows, cannot be skipped, nor is it possible for the child to speed through them. Most children, even at the youngest ages, are able to memorize and recite. But memorization and recitation are not the most meaningful learning activities at this stage. Our goal is to help foster the development of a young child’s creative thinking skills by giving them meaningful opportunities using play to experiment, explore, question, and discover.