Young Linguist Academy, Smyrna

Young Linguist Academy is leading the way in early childcare multi-language education. Introducing children to a second language as they are immersed in the worlds number two language, Spanish. While they are learning through meaningful play-based experiences on topics from their everyday lives. We’ve adopted a whole-child approach to learning that not only focuses on building your child’s understanding and use of Spanish as a second language, but also emphasizes the importance of character, confidence, creativity, and critical-thinking skills. Our studies at YLA focus on providing children with a good, strong foundation. Research has shown that a “whole child” approach to teaching (an approach that recognizes social-emotional, physical, and cognitive skills as equally important as math and literacy skills) better prepares children for experiences beyond the classroom. We use the bilingual system of Creative Curriculum® which provides teachers with unit lessons and a wide variety of activities and books in Spanish and English designed to fully develop the child in these domains: cognitive, social-emotional, mathematics, English language acquisition, physical, science & technology, social studies, the arts, literacy, and language. The Creative Curriculum includes developmentally appropriate goals and objectives for children within four main categories of interest: social/emotional, physical, cognitive and language. The social/emotional stage helps promote independence, self-confidence and self-control. Within this stage, children learn how to make friends, how to have group interactions and how to follow rules. The physical stage is intended to increase children’s large and small motor skills. The cognitive stage is associated with thinking skills. Children learn how to solve problems, ask questions and think critically. The language stage deals with communication. Children learn how to communicate with others, listen and participate in conversations, and recognize various forms of print in English and Spanish.