Early Chilhood Center LAU (CLOSED)

The Early Childhood Center is part of the Education Department at the Lebanese American University. The ECC offers a unique educational program for children between 1.5 to 3.5 years of age. Located on LAU’s premises, the ECC provides a safe, interactive, and challenging learning environment.

The Early Childhood Center is a historic center, established back in the 1950s. Housed on the beautiful premises of LAU’s Beirut campus, the ECC is located on the ground floor of Shannon Hall surrounded by the LAU garden.

The ECC continues in line with its well-established reputation in providing a high-quality and developmentally appropriate learning experience in a rich and stimulating environment for young children. LAU aims to create an exemplary Lab School that is unique in Lebanon and the region, and offers a major initiative that will serve the university and the community.

The ECC/Lab School coordinates with the Department of Education and other departments at LAU to offer the most appropriate child-centered curriculum, and effective learning experiences based on current research findings. The ECC/Lab School also offers placement opportunities for LAU undergraduate and graduate students to apply their knowledge and skills in theory and in practice.

The ECC’s mission is in line with the mission of the University: it provides students with the best developmentally appropriate learning experiences in early childhood education, serves as a venue for teachers’ placement opportunities and promotes community service.

The ECC offers placement opportunities for LAU undergraduate and graduate students in various fields who need to complete part of their course requirements. Students will develop practical knowledge about the development and learning of children. The students will also acquire effective strategies for teaching and learning while applying and assessing developmentally appropriate activities and an understanding of children’s social, cognitive, linguistic, emotional, and physical development.

The ECC is committed to provide an exemplary standard of early childhood education and care for young children in the community to best serve the needs of parents. The ECC presents a unique model and a professional resource for current early childhood teachers who are welcomed to conduct observations at the ECC.

At the ECC, we believe that every child is born with a natural sense of creativity, curiosity and love of learning. Thus, it is our responsibility as educators to create rich learning opportunities where children are continuously motivated and positively challenged to investigate and explore in a non-threatening environment that promotes decision-making and problem-solving skills.

The vision of the ECC is to create a child-friendly environment based on a combination of educational approaches grounded in current research findings that are aimed at promoting the cognitive, creative, physical, social, and emotional development of children. The ECC also aims to provide children with opportunities to grow in a unique environment that encourages the achievement of their highest potential and works on strengthening relationships with the children’s families, teachers, peers and environment.

• Each child is a unique individual with strengths, interests and needs.
• Children are competent, curious, and have high potentials.
• Children are active participants in the learning process.
• Teachers play the roles of guides, facilitators and researchers.
• Parents are partners in the learning environment.
• Children, teachers and parents are the three subjects of education.
• Young children learn best through play which is the primary mechanism for children’s growth and development in all other domains.

Learning environments are successful when they include authentic activities for solving real life situations.
Documentation is an essential way of communication.
Download the complete ECC Curriculum Guide.

Documentation is characterized by the technique of recording children’s ideas and work in progress through taking notes of their words, collecting their drawings, and taking photos and videos of them while at work. While children are involved in various learning activities and play experiences, the ECC teachers circulate among them, discuss with them the phases and processes of their work and ask them open-ended questions including the how, why and what if questions to promote children’s problem-solving and invite them to think deeper about things.

Detailed pictures of children involved in playing, investigating and manipulating various objects with a record of the exact words that they have used to describe what they did, felt and thought of are continuously displayed at the ECC. Both the process and the product of the project being investigated are highlighted by emphasizing children’s ideas, feelings and experiences throughout the learning journey with the teachers’ observations. The documented display of children’s work symbolizes a visual representation of learning.

Assessment at the ECC is directly linked to curriculum goals. Every child’s progress will be continuously assessed in all the developmental areas through the use of ongoing anecdotal records, individual student webs, narrative observations, one-on-one conferences, and developmental continuums and reports. Authentic assessment tools will continuously be used to evaluate children’s progress in their cognitive, social, emotional, linguistic, physical and creative areas. The assessment results will then allow teachers to modify their curriculum plans and individualize their instructional decisions accordingly, taking into consideration children’s learning styles and needs and individual areas of interest in order to guarantee optimum growth of every student. The assessment results will also be communicated to parents on a daily basis and during the parent-teacher conferences!