Learning Train Academy is rooted and grounded in the importance of play-based learning. When thinking about how children’s cognitive abilities develop, we ascribe to the theories put forward by Piaget, Vygotsky and the constructivist theory of learning. With that as our core belief, when it comes to our approach to teaching and learning, our program draws from a variety of sources. One such source is the Reggio Emilia philosophy. A lot of what we know about and the validity for play-based learning comes from the work done by Loris Malaguzzi, the educator who developed the Reggio Emilia philosophy. In addition to drawing from Reggio Emilia we also incorporate many aspects of a Montessori classroom in our program. Our goal being to create a program that builds on the best of what is currently being done in the early childhood education space.

In addition to the traditional academics and social-emotional teaching, students at Learning Train Academy will acquire their native language, English, and will learn a second language, Spanish. This will be achieved in a scaffolded manner. For our infants through the end of two years of age all care-givers will communicate to the baby in Spanish. Our preschool age students will have half their day in Spanish and half their day in English. Splitting the day in this way will ensure our students are kindergarten ready. The English part of the day will be used to work on building literacy skills to send students into kindergarten with tools already in their toolkit for being a life-long learner.