Curriculum
Learning that is grounded in state standards — and built to be fun
Learning that is grounded in state standards — and built to be fun
Every activity at the Teddy Bear Clinic is designed to do two things at once: give children a genuinely fun day, and build real comfort with the people who care for them in an emergency.
When creating activities for Teddy Bear Clinic, I focused on developing engaging, age-appropriate experiences that would allow children to interact with these community helpers in a safe, positive, and fun environment. In order to begin this planning process, I asked myself what the primary goal of the event was: helping children become comfortable with situations involving medical care, emergency services, and public safety personnel while also enjoying the day and having fun!
To demonstrate this goal, I designed hands-on activities that encouraged exploration, role-playing, and positive interactions. For example, for one activity, children got a chance to hold a real fire hose with a firefighter and “put out” fake fire on a wooden building model. In various activities within the clinic, children got to explore medical tools in a non-threatening way, with our students in the Academy of Healthcare Sciences as guides. All of these experiences helped transform potentially intimidating situations into familiar and approachable ones.
During the design process, I incorporated state educational standards to ensure that the activities provided meaningful learning opportunities in addition to emotional support. Activities were aligned with standards related to social-emotional learning, communication skills, health and safety awareness, and community and civic responsibility. Children practiced asking questions, expressing feelings, following directions, solving simple problems, and learning about the roles of community helpers.
Overall, the activity design process combined educational objectives with emotional support strategies to create a welcoming environment where children could build confidence, reduce anxiety, and develop positive associations with healthcare professionals, firefighters and law enforcement officers. By aligning activities with state standards and focusing on interactive learning experiences, the Teddy Bear Clinic successfully promoted both educational growth and emotional well-being.
Our activities are aligned to the following New Jersey Student Learning Standards.
Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering questions about key details and requesting clarification if something is not understood.
Speak in complete sentences when appropriate to task and situation in order to provide requested detail or clarification.
Use multimedia; add drawings or other visual displays to stories or recounts of experiences when appropriate to clarify ideas, thoughts, and feelings.
Ask and answer questions in order to seek help, get information, or clarify something that is not understood.
Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions as desired to provide additional detail.
Describe familiar people, places, things, and events and, with prompting and support, provide additional detail.
Ask and answer questions about information from a speaker, offering appropriate elaboration and detail.
Ask and answer questions about what a speaker says in order to gather additional information or clarify something that is not understood.
Ask and answer questions about key details in an informational text (e.g., who, what, where, when, why, how).