Since it was established in 1998, Beanstalk Education Group has grown from one kindergarten to a full Pre-K – Grade 12 school. We now have 16 kindergarten centers: 11 in Beijing, one in Nanjing, two in Kunming in southern China and one on Weihai. These centers combined constitute the Kindergarten Division of Beanstalk Education Group, and prepare our students to move on to our challenging K-12 program offered at BIBS, or even to enter the national Chinese school system.
1. A Balanced Curriculum
Beanstalk International Kindergartens follow the balanced curriculum which based on theme-learning. The Learning Strands, outlining three key areas of learning – Belongs, Growing, and Learning. The principle of the Balanced Curriculum is to focus on a combination of Community，Environment, Well Being, Physical Control, Independence, Thinking, Skills and Knowledge for children worldwide combined with innovative and exciting ways to learn. The Balanced Curriculum is designed to help children learn essential knowledge and skills, cultivate the sense of Belongs, and develop an understanding of a broad range of curriculum subjects.
We believe that:
The overriding purpose of early years education is to help children develop the skills and attitudes they will need both at this level and throughout a lifetime of learning.
Children need a holistic educational experience that doesn’t create artificial boundaries between different aspects of their development.
Play is an essential part of children’s learning and general development.
2. Beanstalk Kindergarten Programs
The Balanced Curriculum uses thematic units of work (each lasting on average of 4 week). Each unit separates yet integrates many primary subjects including science, technology, culture, environment, responsibilities and society. It directly supports teachers by providing rigorous and meaningful teaching frameworks. As a result, this allows teachers to spend more time planning creative, personalized learning for their children. Children learn through a series of units of work. Each unit of work has a theme that today’s children find interesting and relevant. Examples of these themes includes Friendship, Animals, Transport, Celebrations and Food.
Although the Beanstalk Kindergarten programs offer a variety of language instructional models. Additionally, they are all connected by a common curriculum and philosophy.
Beanstalk believes that the environment of any school is very important. Entering a Beanstalk kindergarten classroom, one sees they are alive with activity, alive with children engaged with learning and exploring. Our classrooms are large, bright and furnished with quality furniture, resources and equipment, while our flexible layout for both group and individual activities and classrooms equipped with age appropriate toys, blocks, games, puzzles and play space mean that our students are able to learn and play as whole group while also having opportunities for individual and small group work. Additionally, our flexible learning spaces allow children to work at floor level or at tables and chairs – wherever they’re comfortable, resulting in happy, engaged learners (and parents) and bulletin boards filled with children’s work and art.
3. Encouraging Creativity and Learning
Our walls proudly boast our students’ work, art and stories for all to see. Presenting class work and accomplishments gives our children a sense of pride and self-importance while also developing and encouraging creativity. Displayed work is about the process and not the product; what matters is that children are given the opportunity to be creative.
We believe that reading should be an enjoyable experience for people of all ages, especially for children. As such, each Beanstalk Kindergarten location has a library of its own so that students can browse through and read age-appropriate books linked to classroom themes, and also those of their choice. Not only do our libraries have a wide selection of both English and Chinese books, our classrooms and common areas are filled with books as well – in addition to toys and games!
Children are curious about everything when they are young and need to have access to a variety of sensory materials (modeling clay, paint or blocks, etc.) with which to engage. As such, a day in one of our kindergarten classrooms is filled with multiple opportunities for learning combined with enriching projects. Learning centers in each classroom are stocked with blocks, math manipulatives, science, family play opportunities, reading corner, and literacy tables. Children have many opportunities to explore areas of interest with teachers providing support and extending play with questions and opportunities to lead children’s learning.
4. Indoor/Outdoor play
Fresh air and exercise is essential to a child’s well-being and Beanstalk believes that curiosity should be encouraged and extended periods of sitting quietly should be kept to a minimum. Encouraging physical activity, our kindergartens feature indoor and outdoor recreation areas with sand and water play areas that provide a safe and secure environment for fun filled activities for our students.
5. Field Trips
At Beanstalk, field trips and excursions relevant to the children’s classroom studies are considered an integral part of the instructional program. At our kindergarten, the children will take part in a different field trip which is relevant to their theme unit. These excursions compliment and supplement the normal curriculum and can be great cultural experiences for the children. Some of the places the students visit include Beijing Zoo, Pumpkin Patch, the train museum and Sony Science Center.
6. Club Beanstalk
Club Beanstalk is an extra-curricular program offered between 4:15pm and 5:00pm, and provides an opportunity for students to develop new skills, make new friends and have lots of fun. Just some of the activities offered through Club Beanstalk include Taekwondo, Ceramic craft, Science club, Robot curriculum, Ballet, Rollerblading and Lego.
Our students are happy about being at kindergarten and a walk through our hallways or a visit to our classrooms will show smiling, giggling and chatter as students enjoy learning and growing.