Fourteen years ago we started on a quest to find a quality preschool in the Southport area and couldn’t find one that would enrich our children socially, emotionally, and cognitively. The idea came in a dream to start our own preschool and the seed was planted in our hearts forever more.
We wanted to build a program and environment that would build on the individual strengths of each child. Over the years we have adapted a myriad of effective curriculums to Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence. Gardner believed that every person possesses 9 different intelligences (nature smart, music smart, number/reasoning smart, life smart, people smart, body smart, word/letter smart, self/intra-personal smart, picture/spatial smart). Through fun activities and enrichment we are constantly exposing the children in our programs to these nine different areas of their intelligence.
The results were astounding and what we have found is that the children use the confidence in their strengths to persevere and build work tolerance in the areas of intelligence that are not as interesting to them. It was through these moments of observation that we realized we have the honor of laying foundations not just in cognitive learning but also in life skills. Perseverance is a learned skill that will serve a child for life.
Serving the children and families of our community is truly a passion of ours and as we have grown as individuals we have incorporated our new found wisdom into our programs and our teaching. We have learned along side our students and families the importance of establishing an emotional vocabulary, affirming our feelings, and having solutions in place to move through our emotions. If the goal is to continually grow as individuals we must learn to let our emotions flow through us and not become stuck in them.
Our logo is a tree because it represents so much of what we hope to help establish in our community. The roots represent the strong foundations that we work to foster, the trunk represents the strength and perseverance that we each possess, and the branches represent endless growth and potential. The MILE tree represents not only what we wish for each child and family in our community but for our corporate body as well.
Fourteen years of learning and growing has enabled us to recently branch out and start offering parent workshops, some child development blogs are coming, and what we are most excited about is our new afterschool program that will serve children kindergarten through 6th grade. Until recently our children aged out of our preschool programs at Kindergarten and the new acquisition of the Bounce Spot will enable us continue to be a daily part of the children’s lives through 6th grade. Our excitement lies in the fact that some of those children will find their passion for teaching and learning and will become mentors to the next generation of MILE students.