We believe learning should feel joyful, purposeful, and connected to the real world.
At Joy Lab Learning Center, children explore the world and their place in it through interdisciplinary, hands-on thematic projects. Curriculum units begin with children’s own questions and allow them to investigate resources, connect ideas, and apply skills across subject areas and environments. The following principles guide curriculum development at Joy Lab Learning Center:
Interdisciplinary | Inquiry-Driven | Child-Centered | Beyond Walls,
Socially Just | Skills-Conscious
Interdisciplinary:
In contrast to the subject “silos” typical of traditional school environments, our curriculum weaves together content areas through thematic studies organized around a broad theme or question. Examples of grounding themes might be stewarding Earth’s water, migration, or building a city. Children explore 3-4 themes a year. Each study begins with an “immersion” phase in which children engage with various resources, places, and activities connected to the core theme. They share prior knowledge, initial noticings, and emerging questions. Children then explore the theme—individually and in groups—guided by essential questions, structured activities, place-based experiences, and ongoing reflection. This exploration integrates reading, writing, social studies, mathematics, and science content in ways authentic to the theme. Each study culminates in a project in which children synthesize their learning and present to an audience. Multi-media projects might include producing a podcast or video, creating a museum exhibit, directing a performance, or writing a policy advocacy letter or position paper.
Inquiry-Driven:
Each curriculum study is rooted in children’s own questions and meaning making. Educators begin the year by inviting children to share topics and issues that they are curious to learn about. Educators leverage these to shape each thematic study, organizing hands-on and place-based learning experiences that speak to children’s curiosities. Throughout the learning process, children track how their exploration is deepening their understanding of the group’s guiding questions and by voicing new questions as they emerge.
Child-Centered:
The purpose of curriculum at Joy Lab is to nurture children’s joy, inquiry, agency, critical thinking, passion for learning, and sense of connectedness to the wider world. Thematic studies position children as researchers, explorers, creators, and facilitators. All learning experiences are designed with children’s diverse capacities and needs in mind.
Beyond Walls:
Curriculum at Joy Lab extends beyond the walls of a traditional classroom. Thematic studies harness children’s curiosity about the world around them, both near and far. Children regularly take trips to explore their neighborhood and natural world to inform thematic studies. Additionally, most afternoons are dedicated to outdoor adventure/exploration and field educational trips. Educators take note to integrate questions and topics that arise naturally during children’s outdoor exploration into ongoing academic studies.
Socially Just:
Whether investigating primary source documents, discussing a poem, conducting an experiment, or building a life-size diorama, children at Joy Lab develop their identities as socially conscious community members. Each thematic study devotes attention to how we care for one another and our planet, systems of (in)justice, democratic participation in local and global communities, and visions for social change.
Skills-Conscious:
At Joy Lab, we see “basic skills” as fundamental to rigorous inquiry-driven learning. Educators make an effort to integrate foundational literacy and mathematics skills into each thematic study, allotting time to explicitly teach and practice these skills as well as authentic opportunities to apply them. In addition, when needed, time blocks are devoted to shoring up math, phonics, and composition skills that either do not naturally occur in a thematic study or that require more time for children to solidify.