The Bilowit Learning Center curriculum is based on the following concepts:
- Developmental: The curriculum is consciously age/stage appropriate. It is designed with the understanding of children's physical, emotional, social and cognitive process.
- Emergent: The curriculum is understood to be emergent when the needs, and skill levels of individuals within the group taken into account. The children's interests of the moment are parlayed into "teachable moments". An emergent curriculum is not predetermined or static; it's flexibility offers children repeated opportunities to make choices.
- Functional: Learning occurs in the context of meaning. Each child interprets activities individually.
- Hands-On: Children learn by doing and experiencing.
- Routine: Stability and the opportunity for mastery and accomplishment can be fostered in the "routine".
- Open: Children choose freely from many available tasks; tasks are open ended.
- Play: Children learn by making choices in a rich environment and by enacting life experiences through art, play, music. Play is the primary vehicle for and indicator of children's mental growth. Play enables children to progress along the developmental sequences of growth and change. Child-initiated, child-directed, teacher supported play is an essential component of "developmentally appropriate practice."
- Process: The process of children's work is emphasized and the child should solely determine it's value, not judgments of others. Process includes the children's internal and external interaction with the environment. It is the process not the product that is our focus. The emphasis is not on the finished product but the process obtained in getting there - the emotional, physical and thought processes that help create the product.