Image of learning materials in a classroom at an academy.

Programs

Nurturing, Warm, Inviting Classrooms

Image of sandbox with toys outside of the learning center.

Programs

Highly Qualified Teachers

Image of learning materials in a classroom at an academy.

Programs

Safe and Stimulating Environment

Image of learning materials in a classroom at an academy.

Programs

Spacious Outdoor Learning Spaces

At Blue Skies Exploration Academy, we offer several programs designed to encourage all children to discover, grow, and explore while laying the foundation for a lifetime of learning.

Our primary focus is meeting each child’s individual needs and fostering their growth. Children are placed in a classroom that best meets their needs and encourages them to develop at their own pace. This establishes self-confidence and healthy growth, which results in a strong, positive self-image.

Click here to download our program milestones overview. 


Newborn baby sleeping in bed.

Infants

Reggio Emilia style education promotes the relationships between child and caregiver allowing for the best possible emotional growth. By engaging infants and toddlers in a rich sensory environment and allowing them to safely explore the world around them, we help them understand the world.

We strive to provide the children with a home-like environment with softer lighting and soft seating areas. The use of found and repurposed materials helps us create an interesting landscape full of shadows, reflections, textures, and stimulating activities. Our amazing teachers cuddle, sing, dance, and read to the children. Soft music is played throughout the day. They create experiences to help infants process what they see, hear, feel, smell, and taste.


Young smiling child playing with colorful pencils.

Toddlers

At its core, the Reggio Emilia philosophy believes that children are competent, responsible, decision-making people that deserve to be treated with respect. With toddlers, this means the teacher works with the parent to meet the children individually at the child’s developmental level and the teacher is highly responsive to the interests of the child.

The interests of young children are a sign of the brain development and physical development a child is undergoing. The teacher creates learning experiences to foster growth and development at the level of each toddler. Toddlers are natural scientists. They spend their days exploring, experimenting, reacting, forming opinions, and creating new experiments–all in an effort to learn about the world around them. This brain-building work is crucial to the development of toddlers.

Our colorful, safe classrooms encourage both learning and social/emotional growth through discovery, sharing, and independence. Our toddler program begins to introduce new language concepts and skills through story time, games and make-believe. Physical skills are developing through push and pull toys, stacking, block play, creative movement, and the use of musical instruments. Toddlers begin to discover shapes and colors, and expand their sense through hands-on arts and crafts activities.


Children drawing on paper with colored pencils in a learning center.

Preschool

Ninety percent of a child’s brain is developed by age five! That’s why preschool—with critically important cognitive, physical, and socio-emotional stimulation—impacts a child’s development long-term. Preschool helps produce:

  • Higher high school graduation rates
  • Greater socialization and earning potential throughout their lives

Our preschool classrooms at Blue Skies Exploration Academy are designed with a wide variety of materials and equipment for your child to use as they focus on deeper, more meaningful explorations of the world.

Your preschooler performs more involved scientific investigations, and are given many opportunities to express themselves through art. We also teach academics, and have class meetings times, while encouraging and teaching those all-important social skills for Kindergarten readiness.


Elementary-age child looking at a planet through a magnifying glass in a classroom.

Pre-K

At Blue Skies Exploration Academy, our Pre-K Program facilitates the development of cognitive, language, math, science, and social skills. We help your child solidify their knowledge base for kindergarten readiness. The skills of questioning, hypothesizing, exploring, and problem-solving is the main focus of our Pre-Kindergarten program. Your child has fun learning while they perform unique investigations on gravity, buoyancy, color and light, and many other topics.

We embed academic kindergarten readiness skills into our curriculum. Pre-K students also have ample opportunity to express their creativity in our art studio.

Additionally, Blue Skies became a state partner-provider for Colorado’s Universal Pre-K (UPK) program; children who turn four years of age before October 1 qualify for 15 hours per week of free pre-K instruction for 36 weeks. Colorado’s program is especially beneficial because it is not income-based; families with certain qualifiers may receive up to 30 hours weekly.

Learn more about UPK (PDF) >>


Additional Programs

Our outdoor classroom area is a very important part of our curriculum. We take great pride in our gardens and greenhouse.  The children are completely involved in every process.

 

The Blues Skies Garden grows everything from produce and wildflowers to succulents and fairy gardens. We also have rabbits that live in our garden and the children are involved in caring for them as well. The children are part of caring for the plants and can eventually harvest them if they are food-based. Farm to table is a wonderful way to introduce healthy foods to the children, and they are all too eager to try something they grew!

 

While wintertime is a bit quieter in the garden itself, we are still making bird feeders and hanging them around. We love to watch the birds and learn all about the different species and even try to memorize their tunes. The greenhouse is bustling with activity during the winter months as the classrooms each has a raised garden bed to plant in.

 

In addition to exploring the world of plants and animals, the children are also learning responsibility. Responsibilities include caring for other living things, and also of keeping the earth clean.

 

They see through their explorations in the garden and greenhouse that the world needs plants and animals to be healthy. Everything has a purpose right down to the smallest little bug!