BLOOMING
Imagine Early Learning Centers has decades of experience creating lessons, activities, and individualized instruction that helps your child develop into a kind, thoughtful, and creative person with a lifelong love of learning.
BLOOMING Curriculum
Imagine uses our proprietary BLOOMING curriculum to drive our approach to early childhood education and prioritizing key cognitive and developmental milestones. By emphasizing brain building, learning healthy habits and behaviors, the natural world and environmental science, creativity and art, cultural awareness and empathy, and key socio-emotional skills, we make sure every part of the child is given a chance to flourish. Each module of the curriculum intertwines with the others, creating a holistic and coherent learning experience for each child.
This curriculum is for you and your children. While it starts in the classroom, BLOOMING Curriculum extends beyond the center. Our goal is to ensure it is easy for Imagine families to reinforce every lesson, activity, and new skill at home, on the move, and everywhere in between.
Big Brains
The Big Brains curriculum reminds children that we use our brains in everything we do and that there is no “right” way to reach developmental milestones. While we know the importance of cognitive development, we use a wide variety of tools and resources to let children arrive at these accomplishments in their own ways.
Areas of Development
- Counting and math
- Reading and literacy
- Language development
- Science
- Sensory
- Fine and gross motor
Infants
- Building curiosity
- Responding to familiar sounds and requests
- Identifying familiar people in their lives
Toddlers
- Identifying shapes
- Completing simple puzzles
- Recalling details about their home lives
3K
- Counting quantifying
- Mastering one-to-one correspondence counting to 20
- Pre-writing exercises
4K
- Science experiments-making predictions
- Forming a hypothesis
- Expanding vocabulary
- Recognizing letters and numbers
- Reading and writing
Learning Healthy Early
Smart brains and happy hearts start with healthy bodies and souls.
At Imagine, we teach your children how to take care of themselves to stay joyful and present and grow big and strong.
Areas of Development
- Trying new foods
- Understanding what’s on their plates, food pyramids
- How to protect their brain and keep it healthy
- Staying clean
- Self-care
Infants
- Building up strength
- Enjoying foods
- Staying clean
Toddlers
- Trying new foods
- Learning about diet and how it gives you strength
3K
- How to stay safe while sick
- What foods are good for you
- How to exercise and move your body
4K
- Learning where our food comes from
- How to stay healthy
- Understanding how food and exercise impacts your body
Our Earth, Our Home
We want Imagine students to appreciate the world around them and the natural life that makes it so beautiful and exciting. Our Earth, Our Home explores all that we share our planet with and how to value and protect everything from the roots in the ground to birds in the sky. We know that taking care of our environment is key to our children’s future, and we believe a lifelong love, understanding, and appreciation of nature should start early.
Areas of Development
- Environment
- Nature
- Animals
- Plants
- Weather
- Elements
Infants
- Nature walks
- Connecting vocabulary to the outside world
- Experience nature through the senses (ie crunching leaves, snow, grass, looking at flowers, hearing birds)
Toddlers
- Types of weather
- Types of climates
- Where different animals live and ecosystems
3K
- How the earth works
- How to reduce
- Reuse
- Recycle
- How people and nature live together
4K
- Taking care of the planet
- Instilling good environmental habits
- Understanding different ecosystems
- Recycling
- Upcycling, and how things grow
Only One You
At Imagine, bringing personalized care and education to each child is
in our DNA.
We know that every child is unique and that recognizing and celebrating their uniqueness is key to developing thoughtful, content, and whole children. Every child moves at their own speed. Every child has different needs and wants. Every child sees the world differently. The Only One You curriculum gives children a chance to explore who they uniquely are, and makes sure children understand that differences make us stronger.
Areas of Development
- Respect for others and individuality
- Building a strong sense of self identity
- We are alike
- We are different
- Celebrating our diversity
Infants
- Mirror play
- Displaying family photos
Toddlers
- Show and tell about yourself
- Starts to feel strongly about wants and likes
- Shows preferences in foods, materials, friends
3K
- Can recognize their physical characteristics
- Builds self help skills
- Starts to engage in conversations about experiences outside of school
4K
- Can verbalize their opinion on a topic
- Understands that not everyone’s families and homes are the same – overlapping deeply with our Imagine Kids for Kids curriculum
- Starts to know their place in their school community
- Can advocate their feelings
- Can understand that differences make us stronger
Mindful Movement
Everyday at Imagine we prioritize movement and thoughtfulness. We love to dance, jump, run, skip, and, of course, chase bubbles. But, we also understand the importance of meditation, calm and stillness. The Mindful Movement curriculum is based on the belief that children’s physical and emotional needs are highly connected: when children can recognize what their bodies need, they are more able to verbalize and regulate their feelings, be aware of their surroundings, and feel a sense of control over themselves.
Areas of Development
- Mindfulness
- Calm
- Exercise
- Meditation
Infants
- Calming music
- Tummy time
- Breathing exercises
- Grabbing
Toddlers
- Meditation
- Calm down ball
- Following direction songs
- Obstacle courses
- Balancing
3K
- Parachute play
- Yoga
- Meditation
- Music and movement
- Outdoor games and walks
4K
- Yoga
- Music and movement
- Outdoor games
- Rhythm sticks
- Bean bag play
- Cooperative large motor games (musical chairs, red light/green light)
Imagine Kids for Kids
We teach Imagine students about kindness, empathy, and how to be grateful individuals.
Built on the foundations of our nonprofit Imagine Kids for Kids, this curriculum gives students the tools to be compassionate and global citizens.
Areas of Development
- Empathy
- Emotions
- Awareness of the world
- Culture and languages
- Geography
Infants
- Building awareness of one another
- Observing other faces for clues on how they should feel
- Pats or stroke others who are upset to comfort
Toddlers
- Starts to recognize others feelings
- Labels and assigns feelings to dolls, and toys and cares for them
- Begins to help with classroom tasks when needed
- Books about different places in the world
3K
- Adapts to various feelings and roles during pretend play
- Starts to recognize that not everyone feels the same way as they do
- Voices concerns about unfair or unkind behavior, starts to observe different physical characteristics
- Learn about different countries, different cultures
- How other people live across the globe and even in NYC.
- Participates in fun-raising projects and initiatives
4K
- Adapts to various feelings and roles during pretend play
- Starts to recognize that not everyone feels the same way as they do
- Voices concerns about unfair or unkind behavior, starts to observe different physical characteristics
- Learn about different countries, different cultures
- How other people live across the globe and even in NYC.
- Participates in fun-raising projects and initiatives
Nurturing Creativity
At Imagine, we know that children implicitly seek creative outlets to understand the world and everything they do in it. Our centers, our teachers, and our curriculums are all built on foundations so that we can inspire and explore creativity in every student, in every classroom.Nurturing Creativity provides the tools for creativity through art, music, dance, dramatic play and storytelling, and imagination.
Areas of Development
- Arts
- Music
- Creative thinking
- Storytelling
Infants
- Calming music
- Creating environments where children can experience freedom of movement
- Exploring their bodies in space and experiencing what they can do physically
- Creating experiences for children to explore art
- Laughing
- Singing
- Giggling
- Participates in fun-raising projects and initiatives
Toddlers
- Uses everyday objects in imaginary play (e.g., picks up sticks and pretends they are swords)
- Experiments with using various materials to solve problems (e.g., places a block on a stack of papers that is blowing away)
- Dresses up as characters, (e.g., wraps a scarf around neck and pretends to be a superhero)
- Moves body creatively to music from all cultures
3K
- Asks adult for assistance with their creations (e.g., the child asks educator to make a tent by putting a sheet over a table)
- Embodies a pretend play character day after day
- Experiments with materials (e.g., dips paint into water and sees what color the water turns)
- Invents words in play.
- Participates in music and movement that involves following directions.
- Enjoys creating masterpieces with paint
4K
- Makes objects that they need for pretend play (e.g., makes a boat out of a cardboard box)
- Tries several ways to create the object they have in mind. (e.g., child experiments with different foundations until they have found the one that will hold up a block bridge)
- Develops techniques for painting and drawing (e.g., makes fast and slow or thick or thin lines)
Growing Language
Children at every age are constantly seeking ways to express themselves, either through verbal language or non-verbal cues, movements or signs.
The Growing Language curriculum gives children outlets to explore language and expression in multiple forms, through bilingual teaching, sign language, labeling emotions and body needs, and playing with sounds, music and creative ways of expression.
Areas of Development
- Facial Expressions
- How to convey your emotions
- Expression
- Languages
Infants
- Uses cooing sounds
- Learns simple Infant sign language for “more”, “milk” and “all done”
- Sing songs and listen to stories in the infant’s home language
Toddlers
- Demonstrates understanding of simple directions in familiar context by responding appropriately (e.g., “Give daddy the cup, please.”)
- Responds to directions that include verbs (e.g., run, jump, reach, open)
- Listen and attends to short stories, recites simple fingerplays
3K
- Answers questions about who, when, or where?
- Recites previous experiences
- Starts to understand opposites
- Participates in conversations
4K
- Adds to a conversation by retelling a similar experience (“I love ice cream too, and I had some vanilla ice cream yesterday.”)
- Initiates an exchange to provide information or to clarify
- Takes turns on topic in an extended exchange, and shows knowledge of the speaker/listener role
- Tells stories with chains of events and actions
Learn more about our age based programs here.
Imagine Curriculum is influenced by The NYS Early Learning Guidelines, The Core Body of Knowledge, the NAEYC DAP statement and best practices, and the Creative Curriculum.
