Heads Up!™

Our Programs

Child Development Centers
Schools

Child
Development
Centers

The centers incorporate an individualized curriculum that continues and expands upon the Montessori curriculum employed in the preschool program. Children are typically placed in groups spanning two to three years of age without grade distinctions. The multi-age groupings make possible a program that is customized for each child to accommodate a range of differences in learning styles and personalities.

	HeadsUp! Curriculum

Our Philosophy

Practices

Curriculum

Fees & Policies

HeadsUp!® Child Development Centers follow an eclectic approach to early learning, borrowing from the best model programs and making use of the most recent educational research. The infant and toddler programs are based on the innovative HeadsUp! Approach, which makes use of play and learning games to help lay the necessary foundation of all future learning.

The preschool program is a modified Montessori curriculum incorporating art, music, and imaginative play into the traditional emphasis on practical life, sensorial, language, mathematics, science, and cultural activities.

The HeadsUp! program recognizes the astonishing capabilities of very young children and offers games and activities that encourage the development of fundamental thinking skills. These skills are the source of physical, social, emotional, and intellectual development. The HeadsUp! program encourages children to become conscious of and take pride in their emerging competence. By becoming aware of the skills he or she has, a young child is better able to use them.

The HeadsUp!® Approach is based on years of research that confirms that:

•   The first four years of life are the most critical with respect to the child's level of intellectual functioning, motivation, and personality.
•   Structured early learning experiences are more effective for development than random discoveries.
•   Early learning programs are more effective when parents are involved.
•   Children learn through play.

These findings led to the development of the curriculum embodied in the HeadsUp!® Child Development Centers. They are also the reason that parent involvement is such an important component of a HeadsUp!® Child Development Center.

The HeadsUp!® Montessori program has been updated to incorporate activities that are an integral part of modern American society and that are preparatory for further learning. As implemented in the HeadsUp!® preschool program, the Montessori approach is characterized by an open classroom filled with individual and small group work areas as well as a large central area for group circle activities. The open shelves are filled with an extensive set of unique Montessori learning materials organized by area (practical life, sensorial, language, mathematics, and culture) and sequenced from most basic to more complex. In addition, there are areas for other activities including art and imaginative play as well as for other preschool play materials.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

A Swiss zoologist and learning theorist, Piaget created pioneering theories on how children learn to adapt to and interpret their environment. He outlined an elaborate sequence of capabilities, divided into four major stages, which he tied to relatively narrow age ranges. He is considered the father of modern child development theory. However, subsequent research indicates that children do not always progress through stages in a linear manner, that the age ranges at which children are capable of performing certain tasks is a function of their experience with the tasks and not their chronological age, and that children in Piaget's "sensorimotor" period (0-2) have much greater abilities than Piaget postulated. Child development programs based on Piaget's stages are typically called "developmentally appropriate," although the appropriateness may be more theoretical than real.