The King's Kingdom

Pwofesè nou yo

Candy Campbell, Executive Director

Candy graduated from Indiana Wesleyan University in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education. Long before completing her schooling, Candy found a passion for caring for children in the early childhood field. In 2002, as a Senior in High School, Candy started her first job in the early education field, that has led to building on her dream and becoming who she is today.

Ashley Bosler: Piqua Site Director Bachelors in Early Childhood Education

Lead Teachers are as follows: Dawn Foust: Infant Room: Bachlor’s Degree in Early Childhood Karyssa Breece: Infant Room: CDA in Early Childhood Olivia Kline: Toddlers: Currently working on CDA Taylor Cook: Float/Young Preschool: Currently working on associate degree. Sydney Miller: Pre-K: Currently working on CDA Assistant Teachers Madison Setzer: Toddlers Bailea Sprunger: Float Sue Ripley: Float Jon Cable: Young Preschool Dee Dee Shephard: Float

Filozofi

In this child-centered preschool, education involves the whole child and includes concerns for the child’s spiritual, physical, cognitive, and social development. Instruction and assessment are organized around the child’s needs, interests, and learning styles. The process of learning, rather than what is learned, is emphasized. Recent research reveals that preschool children learn best through, active, hands-on teaching methods, such as experimenting, exploring, discovering, trying out, and restructuring. Children develop at varying rates and the center needs to allow for those individual differences. Educators refer to this type of schooling as developmentally appropriate practice, which is based upon the knowledge of the typical development of children within an age span (age appropriateness) as well as the uniqueness of the child (individual appropriateness). The King’s Kingdom embraces the following principles and practices of developmentally appropriate practice:

1. Wholeness of the child- children are whole persons in whom physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development are integrated. Each area of development is important and affects every other area of development. Note: The King’s Kingdom also recognizes that each child has a spiritual dimension as well, and that this area needs to be addressed.
2. Active involvement- children must be active participants in their own learning. Manipulation of real, concrete, and relevant materials contributes to children’s understanding.
3. Interaction with adults and peers- learning occurs when children interact with people in their environments.
4. Authentic experiences- children learn best from personally meaningful experiences that flow from the reality of their lives. When school experiences reflect the reality of life beyond the school, learning is more purposeful and relevant.
5. Appropriate learning activities- appropriate learning activities include projects, learning centers, and such activities as building, drawing, writing, discussing, and reading. Research exploration, discovery, and problem solving are examples of recommended educational experiences.
6. Integrated curriculum- integrated thematic units form the foundation for appropriate curriculum, enabling children to make connections among and between ideas and knowledge.
7. Intrinsic motivation- fostering intrinsic motivation has the potential to support the development of responsible and autonomous learners, that is, learners who develop a passion and love for a lifetime of learning.
8. Authentic assessment- evaluation of children’s progress should flow directly from the tasks and experiences in which they have been engaged. There is tremendous normal variability among children of the same chronological age within an individual child. The precise time at which a child will achieve a certain level of development or acquire specific skills is difficult to predict. Learning and development do not occur in rigid, uniform ways. Childhood is not a race; it is a journey. We need to remember to give children adequate time to develop as thinkers, knowers, and problem solvers. However, some children may benefit from early interventions, which allow them to function at their fullest potential. The King’s Kingdom tries to stay on the cutting edge of the latest research on how young children learn and to implement that into our curriculum.

Kote

We are located a short distance from North Adams Community Schools right off on Hwy 224. We sit back off the road in a quiet little area in front of a new up and coming housing addition.

Konsènan pwogram nou an

At the King’s Kingdom we teach, all of the students here with a wide variety of concepts from math and science to art and social studies. Recently we have taken a more hands on approach to STEM through a play-based, child-led curriculum. We love to celebrate families and the events that happen in the day-to-day life as well as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and all Christian holidays! In the summer we have our school aged children and have them busy learning and exploring in special programs that keep their investigation minds rolling.