Curriculum
Learning Through Play, Connection, and Nature
At Frog Pond, curriculum is not confined to worksheets or four walls. Children learn through their whole bodies—digging, building, cooking, creating, wondering, moving, talking, and forming meaningful relationships. Our approach brings together the complementary philosophies of Bev Bos, Dr. Becky Bailey, and the Coyote Guide to Connecting with Nature.
Bev Bos: Learning Through Play
Bev Bos reminds us that children need long periods of meaningful, hands-on play. Open-ended experiences with mud, water, sand, paint, loose parts, music, movement, and cooking allow children to test ideas, solve problems, take appropriate risks, and return to discoveries again and again.
Dr. Becky Bailey: Connection Before Correction
Through Conscious Discipline, children learn within safe, responsive relationships. Teachers help children recognize feelings, regulate their bodies, communicate needs, solve conflicts, and build empathy. We believe connection creates the safety children need to learn and that behavior is communication.
Coyote Guide: Building a Lasting Relationship with Nature
The Coyote Guide supports our practice of helping children notice, question, explore, and develop a personal relationship with the natural world. Teachers act as mentors—following children’s curiosity, encouraging careful observation, sharing stories, and creating opportunities for discovery throughout our two-acre outdoor campus.
Together, these approaches create a curriculum that is play-based, relationship-centered, nature-rich, and responsive to each child. Children build early science, math, language, physical, creative, and social-emotional skills through authentic experiences that are meaningful to them.
Simply Noticing
For young children, careful observation is meaningful learning. Teachers give children language for what they see, hear, smell, feel, and wonder about, reinforcing discoveries through conversation, songs, stories, movement, and art.
As children grow, teachers extend these observations through sorting, counting, measuring with familiar units, comparing, documenting, and viewing the same object or experience from different perspectives.
Experimentation
Children make predictions and test their ideas through meaningful experiments. They may compare what sinks and floats, observe how food scraps change in compost, explore which materials absorb water, investigate shadows, or test different ways to build a stable structure.
The goal is not to produce one correct answer. Children learn to observe carefully, revise their thinking, try again, and explain what they notice—habits that form the foundation of scientific reasoning.
Hands-On
Children learn by doing. They mix colors, test how water moves, build with loose parts, cook, dig, create, and repeat experiences until new understanding takes shape. A simple activity may lead to questions about cause and effect, measurement, texture, balance, or transformation.
Outdoors, a fallen log can become a laboratory. Children feel crumbling wood, notice the smell of damp soil, and discover the decomposers living beneath the bark. These concrete experiences make complex ideas understandable and memorable.
Imagination
Imagination helps children make sense of the world. Through music, movement, storytelling, dramatic play, and open-ended materials, children can become water droplets traveling through the water cycle, animals preparing for winter, builders designing a shelter, or scientists exploring a new discovery.
Teachers connect pretend play with real experiences—such as walking in the rain, jumping in puddles, observing clouds, or comparing hot and cold—so children can move naturally between imagination and emerging scientific understanding.
Animals as Teachers
The animals who share our campus are important teachers. Caring for and observing our goats and chickens helps children understand that living things need food, water, shelter, space, gentleness, and consistent care.
These daily encounters build responsibility, empathy, confidence, and respect. Children also gain an age-appropriate understanding of animal behavior, life cycles, habitats, and the natural relationships between living things.
