For over 30 years, the Atlanta Children’s Shelter has been successfully providing high-quality Early Childhood Education for children facing homelessness in metro Atlanta.
During this time, the Early Childhood Education Program has continuously evolved its services to create a full-fledged learning facility focused on providing every child with quality care and the solid educational foundation required for lifelong learning.
- STEAM Curriculum
- Nutrition Program
- Health & Wellness Program
- Enrichment Activities
Curriculum
The Atlanta Children’s Shelter is proud to implement the Creative Curriculum© Cloud for the Early Childhood Education Program.
The Creative Curriculum© Cloud stresses the importance of learning through direct hands-on interaction. Through the Creative Curriculum©, children are provided with the opportunity to learn about the world around them through hands-on activities which require active thinking and experimenting to discover how things work.
This cloud-based curriculum allows ACS teachers to spend more time focused on instruction and less time locating resources and planning lessons so that the homeless children we serve meet and exceed their developmental milestones. Parents are also given the ability to stay involved with their child’s educational progress through an online system which allows them to view lesson plans and track their child’s progress in the classroom.
In addition, our Early Childhood Education Program implements a Social Emotional Learning Curriculum called The 7 Mindsets. This Social Emotional Curriculum improves relationships, reduces behavioral issues, increases grit and leads to improved academic performance.
Nutrition Programs
There are numerous studies which have established a direct correlation between proper nutrition and educational development during early childhood.
Through a generous grant from the Herbalife Nutrition Foundation, and the assistance of numerous community partners, the Atlanta Children’s Shelter created an Early Childhood Nutrition Program focused on ensuring each child enrolled receives two healthy meals and two healthy snacks each day enrolled at the Shelter.
Enrichment Programs
We believe that education can many different forms and that it is important to provide ACS children with as many opportunities to learn about the world they live as possible. To help ensure all the children at the Atlanta Children’s Shelter have the best possible opportunity to learn we have developed a robust enrichment program focused on:
- Music Education
- PlayBall Physical Education
- Art Education
In addition to numerous in class opportunities, the Atlanta Children’s Shelter partners with several community groups to host educational field trips which makes learning more interactive.
Health and Wellness
At the Atlanta Children’s Shelter one of our goals is to ensure the health and wellbeing of the children we serve. Therefore, all students are prescreened for mental health needs and trauma recovery support upon enrollment. We are fortunate to have created a partnership with Active Resilience Counseling & Coaching (ARC) to provide ACS children with onsite play therapy twice a week. Play therapy sessions are carried out individually and in a small group setting in the classroom and in our designated play therapy room.
The Childcare Program is dedicated to always providing children in its care with a healthy, safe and nurturing environment and ARC helps the Shelter achieve this.
