Milestones Learning Academy: Nurturing Growth and Development

Milestones Learning Academy (MLA) is dedicated to providing high-quality and ethical care for clients and their families. With a client-centered approach, MLA utilizes a comprehensive treatment model that integrates natural teaching, play, and structured teaching. The academy values its clinicians, fostering an environment where they can provide compassionate care to families, addressing the challenges they face throughout the care process.

A Focus on Individualized Treatment

MLA's treatment plans are designed to meet the diverse needs of children, teens, and adults. Understanding that each individual learns and develops differently, the academy emphasizes a personalized approach to education and care.

The Montessori Approach at Milestones

Milestones Learning Academy incorporates the Montessori method, fostering a child’s intrinsic curiosity by providing an enriched and challenging environment to freely learn, explore, and express themselves. Learning is most effective in an environment that allows a child the freedom to make discoveries, with specific ground rules: Maintain respect for self, others and the environment. The Montessori environment hovers between a fine balance of structure and freedom. The classroom is the child’s work place. It is a safe, well-prepared, beautiful space that welcomes the child to work independently and cooperatively. It contains materials and equipment necessary for children’s learning from the very basic to the more advanced.

Key Elements of the Montessori Classroom

The Montessori classroom offers hundreds of unique self-correcting materials in five different subject areas:

Practical Life: This area introduces children to work in a Montessori classroom. Through exercises and repetition of practical skills, children learn how to complete work from beginning to end by following a sequence of performance steps. These activities include many of the tasks children see as part of the daily life in their home such as buttoning, zipping, setting the table, watering plants, washing the windows, preparing food, doing the dishes, arranging flowers, etc. Practical life exercises assist children in developing habits of concentration and completing activities, while empowering them to care for themselves, others, and the environment.
Sensorial: The sensorial materials serve as tools for development, teaching children shapes, colors, spatial relationships, and logical thinking skills.
Mathematics: The mathematics materials help the child learn and understand mathematical concepts by working with concrete materials.
Language: The Montessori environment is rich in both written and oral language opportunities, vital to a child’s development. Children experience oral language through conversations, stories, and songs. Written language begins with the sandpaper letters, where children link sound and symbol. The sequential language materials progressively help the child to develop written expression and reading skills.
Physical Education: Students are encouraged to participate in physical education as a step towards developing a lifelong appreciation for exercise and physical fitness.

Programs for Every Stage

Milestones Montessori is a year round school offering a variety of schedules to meet the needs of our families. Below are the schedules available for each age group. Please contact us directly for specific tuition information.

Infant Program: The Infant Program cares for children ages 4 months (6 months at Lake Forest) - 24 months. In the Young Infant Center, we primarily focus on meeting the daily needs of our infants. Our Infant Center is a well designed environment prepared entirely for the discovery of our youngest students. Milestones Montessori provides a nurturing and secure environment where young children can do what they do best, explore everything! At this age, children interact with the world through tactile and visual stimulation. The prepared classroom is characterized by order, simplicity and beauty; for example, a padded play area is set up to allow for nonrestrictive movement. Special attention is given to the development of expressive and comprehensive language skills.
Toddler/Transitional Program: A toddler/transitional is a child 18 to 36 months old, in transition between babyhood and the preschool years. During these sensitive years, young children assimilate and process their own balance of physical, cognitive, social, and emotional stimulation from the world around them. The child in the Toddler Program begins to step out, literally, into his or her first experience beyond the family. Most often, this is the child’s first opportunity to interact with other children similar in age; through the social community of peers, the child begins to understand the importance of cooperation and assertiveness. Toddlers go through a time of tremendous growth with unique needs and abilities that can be well met by the Montessori classroom. The Transitional classroom is a scaled down version of our older Pre-K classroom. The Montessori materials provide a wonderful vehicle to help children begin to sort and organize all they have been learning thus far. Our program offers children a natural environment to learn and progress at their own pace while focusing on potty training and social and emotional growth. The toddler program is for 18 - 30 months. The transitional program is for children are at least 2 years old and through the start of Preschool.
Pre-K Program: At the Pre-K level, the focus is on developing the building blocks for learning. The Montessori environment is designed to support children’s natural interests and propensity for learning at their own pace and readiness. Our Preschool program is for children who are 3 through 5 years of age, which requires a child to be toilet trained.
Kindergarten: Kindergarten and Second Grade years provide an explosion into learning and maturity. The Kindergarten year is a critical component of the three-year Early Childhood Montessori program. This is the year when children’s earlier experiences are internalized and reinforced. The child learns to develop responsibility and time management in their work cycle. The Full Day schedule is from 8:30A-3:30P. Half Day is from 8:30A - 12:15P.

Milestones Montessori operates between the hours of 7:00 AM and 6:00 PM, Monday through Friday on a year-round 12-month program. The admissions procedure at MMI is a two-fold process. It is designed to give parents an opportunity to learn about the school, its philosophy and policies, and to meet our staff. It also gives us an opportunity to assess each child and determine whether we are able to meet the needs and expectations of the child and parents.

The Vision Behind Milestones Day School

The founder of Milestones Learning Academy, driven by a desire to create impactful change, established Milestones Day School in 2005. With a vision to provide an intense pragmatic curriculum melded with robust academic programming, the school quickly grew, serving approximately 90 students today.

Milestones Academy: Prioritizing Well-being and Family Involvement

At Milestone Academy, the focus is on putting a child’s well-being first and making it easy for families to stay involved in their educational journey. The small classroom setting provides the perfect environment for a child to thrive and build a strong foundation for first grade. The nationally recognized curriculum is designed to provide the best education possible. Through a variety of engaging activities, a child will develop essential skills in literacy, math, social studies, science, self-help, and social skills. Throughout the year, the academy closely monitors and tracks a child’s progress in five key knowledge areas, guaranteeing they are fully prepared and equipped for the exciting transition to first grade.

A Curriculum Designed for Success

Milestones Academy understands that each and every child possesses the innate curiosity and drive to uncover the wonders of the world. Recognizing the increasing expectations for kindergarten students to read, the academy's kindergarten literacy curriculum is designed to help children meet this new challenge and unleash their creativity while expanding their language skills. The carefully crafted curriculum takes children on an exciting journey, from learning sign language to mastering phonemic awareness.

The curriculum also includes:

Read also: Comprehensive Child Development

Creative Arts: Allowing children to journey through time to discover the power of visual and creative arts.
Social Studies: Celebrating diversity and encouraging meaningful connections, empowering children to thrive in an interconnected world.
Physical Development: Focusing on teaching children the right way to move, balance, and master their motor skills through engaging and entertaining activities.
Cognitive Skills: At this age, children start grasping the concepts of counting, categorizing, and comparing. These cognitive skills form the very foundation for understanding math at the primary school level. Through engaging activities, the academy fosters a child’s critical reasoning skills, creativity, and perseverance in problem-solving.

Accelerated Pre-K Program

Milestones Academy offers an accelerated Pre-K program to children between the ages of three and five years old. Children at this age can concentrate longer, make better connections between things and have exceptional abilities to communicate, express their ideas, take risks and make friends. They even begin to understand that other people have important feelings.

The Key Person Approach

The Early Years Foundation Stage requires that children in a group setting must be assigned to one adult called their Key Person. The key person approach is a way of giving undivided attention and focus aimed at close attachment of individual children with individual staff members. The key person is responsible to help your child feel settled and familiar with the setting, feel confident and safe within it and for children to feel secure and happy as they explore and try new things in their preschool. Key person experience also ensures that parents have the opportunity to build a personal relationship with one staff member rather than a number of people who work within the childcare setting. The same key person is there to greet your child in the morning, to provide comfort to them if they’re upset, to enjoy time with them and play with them one on one whenever possible or offer intimate bodily care.

At this stage, children will be introduced to learning areas to promote their independence, ability to make their own choices in balance with teacher-led activities, which are called Small Group Times. Our learning areas are intentionally designed to meet children’s natural desires to look for interesting things, to engage with developmentally and age-appropriate manipulatives which cover all Seven Areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum.

Creating a Nurturing and Stimulating Environment

At Milestones Academy, they realize that children need consistency and a variety of ways to learn. As a response to children’s ages and stages they use high quality developmental toys to help their brains make connections and build strong foundations. They offer Spanish and Chinese Mandarin to all our children right from their infancy. Their curriculum broadly supports children’s development through creating environment that encourages their physical, social-emotional and language development. At Milestones Academy, they encourage active learning through materials to explore with all their senses, opportunities to make choices, prospects to communicate their discoveries and feelings and ongoing responsive support of trusted adults every single day.

For safety and security purposes, the classes are equipped with CCTV cameras and recordings are confidential and will not be shared with all the parents through our app.

Read also: Understanding PLCs

Embracing Modern Learning Styles

Depending on children’s readiness and interest, they offer a holistic reading program called Jolly Phonics. Jolly Phonics is the world’s leading literacy program in English, and it teaches children how to read and write using phonics while heavily relying on their pre-reading and pre-writing skills. Phonics is a method used to teach sounds that letters make rather than the names of letters in the alphabet. The sounds are taught in a systemic way along with all other important skills needed for your children to read and write comfortably and confidently through characters, fun actions, stories, songs and interactive games.

In their efforts to meet all the modern learning styles of children, they have a dedicated technology area at Milestones Academy. They use technology to enhance children’s learning in classrooms through intentionally chosen learning applications and programs appropriate for your child’s age.

Leadership and Commitment

Amy Sanger, Owner/Director, will own and operate Milestones Learning Academy. Amy graduated from Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, MO, with a Bachelors degree in Psychology. After graduation, her experience began in the animal health industry. Her roles included working with the dolphins and sea lions in San Diego, she was a Zookeeper for the Kansas City Zoo and the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago as well as a Manager for DeAnna Rose Farm in Overland Park, KS. Amy moved to Fort Smith over seven years ago. She became a preschool teacher at Christ the King, teaching all ages.

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