WELCOME TO
Little Owl School
Tucked in the waterfront playground at the heart of Southern California, is a breathtaking natural playground with fruit trees and a vegetable garden. The building is surrounding by plants that thrive on the vertical front and rear walls of this little school.
Climb up to the roof and you'll be greeted by green roofs that serve as a private exterior space, and green walls that assist with building insulation, moderate the temperature on site, minimize water runoff, and provide a beautiful nature-based environment. What a sight—an entirely eco-friendly environment where children and families come together!
ABOUT THE
school
A small school with a significant purpose—work to change the way young children interact with the world. By helping experience fairness, integrity, and respect for others and the environment; ultimately, providing children a springboard for becoming the person they are meant to be...
And if we begin to value who children are, not just what we want them to be, a shift happens in the way we think about learning and teaching.
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PROGRAM
philosophy
At Little Owl, the child's inherent desire to learn is acknowledged and facilitated.
Children learn to live fully and joyfully and ultimately become self-motivated problem solvers with an abiding curiosity about the world through the Reggio Emilia Approach.
At the heart of children's learning is—play! Through this self-initiated play, children develop physical, cognitive, social, and emotional skills and grow to become critical thinkers.
The educational philosophy at Little Owl is based on constructivist learning theory. The research has shown that children learn best by discovering and constructing their knowledge in an enriched environment. Through relationships with both people and materials, children develop and construct meaning and a contextual understanding of themselves and the world at large.
NEGOTIATED
curriculum
The educational program and vision at Little Owl School is inspired and nurtured by the schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, where education is viewed not as a product or goal to be attained but rather as an ongoing process of growing and learning through investigation and inquiry.
The knowledge about how children grow, learn, and develop critical thinking is also validated by the work of Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, Dewey, and others.
"The curriculum is not child-centered or teacher-directed. The curriculum is child originated and teacher framed…
INNOVATIONS IN EARLY EDUCATION
Great care has been given to selecting the term 'negotiated curriculum' instead of emergent or child-centered curriculum.
"A 'negotiated curriculum' better captures the constructive, continual and reciprocal relationships among teachers, children, and parents and better captures the negotiations among subject matter: representational media and the children's current knowledge."
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FOSTERING
collaboration
Collaborative group work, both large and small, is valuable and necessary to advance overall development. Children are encouraged to dialogue, critique, compare, negotiate, hypothesize, and problem-solve through group work.
At Little Owl, they believe that multiple perspectives promote both a sense of group membership and the uniqueness of self.
TEACHERS AS
researchers
Teachers are committed to reflection about their teaching and learning.
Working as co-researchers, the teacher is first and foremost a learner alongside
the children. The teacher is a resource and guide, lending expertise to children (Edwards & Forman, 1993). Within such a role, the teacher carefully listens, observes, and documents children's work and community growth in the classroom. Teachers use their classroom research to provoke, co-construct and stimulate
deeper thinking.
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