Approach to Early Childhood Education
At Sankofa, we let children be children. Our educational approach is child-directed, non-academic and holistic in nature. We believe that free, imaginative play builds the foundation for creativity and critical thinking later on in life. We strive to stimulate and develop all of the child’s senses through a number of activities.
Regular Activities
• Singing and music
• Storytelling, rhymes and reading
• Indoor and outdoor play
• Gardening
• Baking
• Arts and crafts
• Modeling with clay and beeswax
These activities have been carefully selected to enhance the child’s language/literacy development, concentration and memory, fine and gross motor development, and social skills.
Group Structure
Sankofa consists of three bilingual mixed-age groups for children between the ages of 1 and 6:
• 1 English-German group for children aged 3-6 years – “the Elephants”
• 1 French-German group for children aged 3-6 years – “the Giraffes”
• 1 English-French-German group for children aged 1-3 years – “the Lions”
Each group consists of 16 children.
Bilingualism
We maintain the bilingual aspect of our program by employing English/French/German native speakers who read, sing and speak to the children in their group in their respective languages.
We recognize that our families speak a variety of languages at home and we value this linguistic diversity. Even though we have chosen English and French (two widely spoken languages in Africa and the African diaspora), we celebrate the many other languages our families and staff speak and strive to incorporate them through songs, nursery rhymes and storytelling.
