Early Learning Center

Introducing the Founding Families Benefit Program. Whittle School & Studios has always seen as central to its mission the importance of Fostering Generosity of Spirit. That phrase was the heading of an important chapter in our original “book,” written four years ago this month, that describes Whittle’s vision.

A core part of the Whittle School & Studios mission is to build cultural competency and develop local and global perspectives. Our February “X-Days,” dedicated experiential learning days once per week, have been specially crafted by our educators to allow students to extend their classroom learning by engaging with moments of national and international significance.

The Whittle community is grateful for many things this year: for members of the healthcare community, essential workers, advocates fighting racial inequality and promoting justice. And as the world says goodbye to a difficult year, we are taking the opportunity to reflect on the positives within our own community - the bright moments of 2020 that helped our Whittle world find light in the darkness, and the wins that kept us motivated to continue moving forward.

Creative Arts and Design Teacher, Maria Burke, created the “Design for Play” project for our DC Campus K – 5th graders. The project was integrated into the curriculum - in particular X-days, weekly days dedicated to experiential learning.

Since classes have moved into the distance-learning environment, our Whittle School educators have adapted our global curriculum into remote instruction. A core component of our academic model is personalized learning. Our Early Learning team has started to “meet” with language learners in small groups, to continue to meet students individualized learning levels.

What better way to pass time as a family than to through an at-home engineering challenge? Recently, Whittle school families participated in a Rube Goldberg challenge in creating a “chain-reaction” obstacle course.

Kindergarten Lead Teacher, Alice Yang, began class in asking each child in Mandarin what food they “loved,” to review some of the basic vocabulary students have been learning during their recent unit on restaurants.

At Whittle School & Studios, central to our Early Learning Center philosophy is a Reggio Emilia-inspired emergent and personalized curriculum that is co-created by teachers and children, as well as their families. We seek out every opportunity to engage families as partners to develop joyous learning at school and at home.

Early learners at our DC Campus are immersed in a project cycle dedicated to “restaurants”. When learning moved from the classroom to our homes, Early Learning Teacher, Mintong Zheng, led an experiential lesson in cooking from her house! Learn more about her lesson plan and the responses from students below.

Immersive language study is an essential part of the Early Learning curriculum at Whittle. Recently, our Kindergarten class has been using tea as a way to better understand Chinese culture. In China, tea is a vital part of the culture, and people drink it on a daily basis.