Programs
Emergent Curriculum
At Hilltop, we view curriculum as everything that happens during our time together with the children. We believe that each moment offers an opportunity to explore relationships and to create a community that nurtures children, teachers, and families. Each moment holds a range of feelings and interests. There are always questions to pursue, hypotheses to investigate, and discoveries to celebrate. Curriculum happens all day, in every routine, action, interaction, and rearrangement of the room.
We begin each school year with attention to creating a simple, beautiful environment, one that invites curiosity and exploration. Areas of the room have uncluttered shelves with open-ended materials and objects from the natural world to supplement basic early childhood supplies like blocks, puzzles, play dough, and dress-up clothes. Bulletin boards are empty in the first weeks, ready to be shaped by the life of the classroom, rather than filled with decorations created by adults.
We create long stretches of open time for the children’s play and exploration during the day, believing that children deserve to engage deeply with each other and with their ideas, questions, and challenges. We strive to minimize transitions and interruptions of the children’s play and work.
In our classroom spaces, children have opportunities to engage in sensory exploration, drama play, block building, game playing, puzzle work, writing and drawing, and reading. You’ll see children playing with their peers or alone, building with blocks, dressing up, immersed in constructing with Legos or blocks, up to their elbows in blubber or play dough, reading books, sorting tiny objects, or writing letters and drawing pictures. You’ll see teachers watching and listening to children, documenting their play with photos and notes, offering resources to support and extend their play, and playing alongside kids. You’ll seldom (if ever) see us involved in didactic teaching with the children, or leading a formalized group learning activity. We believe that children learn as they pursue their passions and questions; our job, we believe, is to deepen and extend that learning.