Program Experiences
Besides promoting a fun and creative play environment, how do the Centers in The West Hill School Discovery Room foster the cognitive, social, emotional, and physical growth of the children?
Discovery Centers
Keeping the important emphasis on “play” as a critical vehicle for learning for the preschool age child, the West Hill staff utilized current research on effective preschools to create the Discovery Room. This engaging, exciting, and fun learning environment will facilitate the children’s exploration and discovery in eight different play areas (Centers). The Centers (Blocks, Dramatic Play, Science and Nature, Mathematics and Manipulatives, Art, Literacy, Music and Movement and Bikes) will engage children in purposeful play while expanding their interests and addressing the range of development levels of the preschool age children.
Art Center
- Develops fine motor skills and eye/hand coordination
- Stimulates imagination, creativity, and self-expression
- Promotes decision-making and planning skills in regard to symmetry, balance, and design
- Reinforces knowledge of shape, color, space, size and patterning
- Provides opportunities to practice properly gripping a pencil, a paintbrush, and scissors
Blocks
- Promotes cooperation, problem solving, sharing, and acceptance of others’ ideas
- Encourages vocabulary development and communication skills
- Strengthens eye/hand cooperation
- Reinforces the concepts of balance, space, number, size, shape, length, height, weight, area, and cause and effect
Dramatic Play
- Develops creativity, imagination, self-awareness, and self-expression
- Provides opportunities to practice abstract thinking
- Promotes decision making, cooperation, and sharing
- Strengthens oral communication skills and vocabulary
- Increases understanding of the world
STEAM
- Builds a sense of pride as students see an experiment through to conclusion
- Strengthens the ability to ask questions and describe objects and events
- Reinforces the use of the five senses
- Enhances the capability to reason, observe, explore, question, predict, discover, and make decisions
Mathematics and Manipulatives
- Builds math and number skills- including sorting, matching, classifying, sequencing, patterning, one-to-one correspondence, rote counting, and problem solving
- Reinforces math vocabulary
- Encourages critical thinking as students ask questions and explain thought processes.
- Enhances cooperation and sharing skills
- Encourages an understanding of the relationship between the parts of a whole
- Strengthens imagination, fine motor skills, and eye/hand coordination
- Reinforces concepts of number, shape, size, color, texture, and location
- Enhances eye-hand coordination
- Promotes cooperation and sharing
- Encourages an understanding of cause and effect and comparing and contrasting
- Reinforces the concepts of empty, full, volume, and weight
Provides opportunities for students to learn to clean up after themselves
Literacy
- Develops understanding of the importance of spoken sounds and print materials
- Builds vocabulary, memory, comprehension, and phonemic awareness
- Provides opportunities to practice recalling, predicting, and sequencing
- Boosts letter-recognition skills
- Reinforces the importance of print in communication, fostering a love of reading and a respect for books
- Encourages self-expression and imagination
- Builds letter and word recognition skills as well as vocabulary
- Strengthens visual-tracking skills
- Enhances ability to sequence pictures and events
- Improves ability to interpret pictures in a story
- Supports understanding of print concepts and the parts of a book
- Develops listening skills and literacy discrimination
- Strengthens letter and word recognition skills
- Builds confidence and a love of reading
- Provides opportunities to encounter new language patterns, absorb new concepts, and build vocabulary
- Enhances fine motor skills and eye/hand coordination
- Boosts imagination, self-expression, and understanding of the purpose of writing
- Builds an appreciation for the writing of others
- Promotes sharing and collaboration
- Strengthens communication, vocabulary, spelling, and phonemic awareness
Music and Movement
- Builds oral communication skills, vocabulary, and listening skills
- Develops appreciation for rhyme and poetry as well as musical sound
- Develops rhythm, agility, balance, and spatial awareness while enhancing strength and coordination
- Encourages self-expression
The Playscape
The Playscape is the latest West Hill School enhancement that supports the growth and development of the whole child while engaging children in their daily work of play. Research supports that smartphones, tablets, video games and television dominate the waking hours of children today. Next to sleeping, many children spend more time using a. screen than any other activity, leading to more screen time than green time. Children are disconnected from the outdoors and nature. We want our children to care about nature now so they will want to care for it as adults.
The Playscape is comprised of intentionally designed engaging spaces dedicated to connecting children to their interests, to each other and to meaningful experiences ‘With nature as a part of daily learning’. Children have the freedom to choose from fifteen different nature – inspired areas that utilize natural materials designed to satisfy their individual interests, developmental levels and skill sets in the natural world. The possibilities are endless. Children dig for worms, care for their garden, build forts, play with water and sand, climb over a hill, sit quietly with books, perform on a stage, paint, make music, dance, play running and jumping games, and conduct nature-inspired experiments. The Playscape allows children to be children while inspiring wonder, freedom, adventure, experimentation and safe risk-taking.
Testimonial: “The outdoor playscape added in SY 2018-19 really sets this apart from other play-based schools in the area – it’s comprised of 16 different centers that allow kids to explore different areas of interest (art, music, building, etc.) with friends or independently. Additionally, we have found the staff to be unparalleled in their skills and warmth. Everyone in the school plays an important part of the day-to-day operations, knows the kids and parents by name, and is constantly looking for ways to enhance the programs (for example, Story Time Chess – an awesome chess learning system for kids 3+ – was added as an option for Afternoon Enrichment this year at the initiative of one of the Head Teachers). Our daughter literally jumps out of bed in the morning asking if it’s time to go to school. We are so happy to have the opportunity to be a part of this community – it’s such a special place and I can’t recommend it highly enough!” —WHS Parent
The West Hill School
1455 West Hill Road
Rosemont, Pennsylvania 19010
Phone: 610-525-7660
[email protected]
The School is accredited by the Pennsylvania Association of Independent Schools (PAIS).
Employment at WHS
We are committed to provide equal opportunity in all of our employment practices, including selection, hiring, promotion, and compensation, to all qualified applicants and employees without regard to age, race, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, pregnancy, honorably discharged veteran or military status, or any other protected status in accordance with the requirements of all federal, state and local laws, including the use of a trained guide dog or service animal by a person with a disability. If you believe you have been treated inconsistently with this, please immediately report your concern to The Head of School. You will not be retaliated against for bringing forth a complaint in good faith.
Diversity Statement
At The West Hill School, we create a nurturing atmosphere where individuality is valued and honored. We believe that a diverse and welcoming community fosters a positive experience and enriches understanding of oneself and others. We respect and appreciate all differences among members of our school family, including age, culture, disability or handicap, ethnicity, family structure, learning styles, national origin, citizenship status, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and socio-economic status. We are committed to achieving a safe, equitable, and inclusive environment across all areas of school life.