Early Childhood Education
Our Early Years program is grounded in early childhood best practices of holistic, authentic learning. That means our teachers are helping our littlest scholars grow and develop their bodies, minds, emotions, language, and social skills. These are supported by our Australian curriculum standards of Being, Belonging, Becoming. Each child is challenged to grow and develop through play-based learning that is embedded into our daily schedule. Play is how children learn when they are young as it engages, motivates, and sparks their curiosity. Our teachers design activities and provocations that help them investigate into our four units of inquiry that challenges their current knowledge and allows them to make connections to themselves, others, and the world around them.
Our unit of inquiries revolve around the PYP units of Who We Are, How We Express Ourselves, How We Organize Ourselves, and Sharing the Planet. In the Who We Are unit, children explore how their 5 senses work and is a line of inquiry all year long. For the How We Express Ourselves, students look at materials and tools they use to be creative through various art mediums. The How We Organize Ourselves unit allows students to make connections with people in their lives such as their families, friends, and people in our community. Our last unit, Sharing the Planet, builds on students’ knowledge of plants and animals on a farm. All of these units an inquiry approach to learning where teachers find out what they know and challenge them to discover more about the concepts in a fun, playful way.
HIS is an IB Continuum School and uses the IB Learner Profile as a guide for developing student attributes so that we may nurture the ability of students to use a variety of necessary soft skills including communication, thinking, self-management, research, and social skills. Furthermore, we encourage mindful approaches to resilience, perseverance, inquiry, and being a principled and balanced individual.
The Lower School (Early Years – Grade 5) at HIS follows the principles and practices of the IB Primary Years Programme (PYP). The curriculum is transdisciplinary in nature, which incorporates subject learning of Math, Literacy, Social Studies, Science, the Arts, and STEAM within thematic units of inquiry. In addition to these thematic units, lower school learning is supplemented with the Singapore Math, Kelso’s Choice Conflict Management and Character Building programs. Lower School instruction is also supported by specialists in the areas of physical education, arts, Mandarin and ESOL, learning support, STEAM and library.
For further information on Lower School curriculum and programs, please click on the links below:
IB Primary Years Programme (IB PYP)
IB PYP Brochure Chinese 国际文凭小学项目
IB PYP Early Years Brochure English
IB PYP Early Years Brochure Chinese
国际文凭小学项目的幼儿教育阶段
Kelso’s Choice Conflict Management and Character Building
