The Mission of Love Preschool has been a vision for many years. God blessed us first with the heart to provide a gospel centered learning environment for the children here and later He blessed us with the finances to make our dream a reality. In 2010, the footers were dug and a foundation was laid. Then in 2011, the concrete foundation was poured, the brick walls went up, the tin roof was installed, the windows went in, the walls were plastered and painted, and the school building was completed in early November of that same year. To our delight, God allowed us to open the program to over 80 children, encompassing over 6 villages, in the nearby area in February 2012.
Teaching Philosophy:
This sole purpose of this school is to glorify the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords; to make the name of Jesus spread wide through the villages. That being said, our whole philosophy in teaching the children and running the early childhood program is centered on the gospel of Jesus Christ. We desire for this school to be set apart so that the community cannot deny the power of our God and His love for His children.
At MOL Preschool, we have adopted the Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education. This philosophy focuses on the individual child and drawing out the natural strengths, desires, abilities, and interests that God has created in him/her. Reggio highlights that each child has 100 Languages in which to communicate their learning and it is up to us as educators to help them find and express those languages. We value each child as beautiful, powerful, competent, creative, curious, and full of potential and ambitious desires. In our approach to teaching the children, we believe they are created with the innate desire to explore, discover, learn, and make sense of the world around them; so we have created an environment where they can foster that type of ambition. “They are natural researchers as they question what they see, hypothesize solutions, predict outcomes, experiment, and reflect on their discoveries.” (Staley) While engaging in project work, the children get the opportunity to take on in all facets of learning described above, allowing the children to draw their own conclusions instead of the teachers doing it for them making the learning process much richer for each individual child. The curriculum emerges with the children’s interests as the year goes on. Each class is diverse and unique and sometimes all four classes are studying something different because their interests are so widely spread. In addition to the “everyday” learning, we make time for a bible lesson each week talking about it and applying it each day, giving them a foundation on Christ.
“Our expectations of the child must be very flexible and varied. We must be able to be amazed and enjoy like the children often do. We must be able to catch the ball that the children throw us, and toss it back to them in ways that make the children want to continue the game with us, developing, perhaps, other games as we go along.”