Specially designed environment

Our infants have their own classroom (including nursery/napping area), playroom and patio. Each infant has his or her own designated crib. The playroom is strategically constructed to accommodate several small-group activities. Our dedicated toddler rooms and playground are specially designed to meet their growing need to explore their world and express their independence. Many different play areas are included to promote new experiences, from building blocks and role playing to art, puzzles and climbing.

Individual attention

In addition to small-group activities, we develop individualized activities based on each baby's and toddler's personal developmental readiness. We provide developmental assessments to parents, and maintain formal daily communication, to help maximize the effectiveness of our program.

Continuity of care

We keep our infants and toddlers with familiar caregivers and teachers over long periods of time. This helps the children develop healthy emotional attachments. According to classic research from the 1940s and 60s, children who develop secure attachments to caregivers during their early years are more willing to explore the exciting world around them, and strengthen their bond with their parents.

Primary care giving

Each infant and toddler is assigned to a primary caregiver, who is the main person that feeds, cares for and engages the child in stimulating activities. This system of individual attention provides a sense of overall security -- the foundation for growth and development. It also assures that the primary caregiver gets to know the child in-depth and can tailor early education to the child's unique needs and personality.

Small group learning

We keep children in small groups, a strategy strongly recommended by research findings to promote bonding as well as developing social skills and an awareness of other children around them.

Preschool/Kindergarten Readiness Curriculum

Our Pre-Kindergarten Program is designed to help children reach their individual potential and be well prepared for kindergarten. It provides a wide variety of learning experiences for children to develop the literacy, math, social and physical skills they need to be successful in kindergarten.

Literacy - Through our comprehensive literacy research-based curriculum, we tie together various learning activities to the contents of special focus stories each week. Letter recognition, phonological and phonemic awareness activities (sounds that letters and groups of letters make) is a part of the planned curriculum each week. Children also learn basic writing skills so they are competent at writing their name before kindergarten. To find additional information about literacy with young children check out the great events and information available at www.mrsnelsons.com

Math - Early childhood math skills are taught through a research-based curriculum called Big Math for Little Kids and has been found to increase children’s K-12 readiness for math in significant ways. Our children learn skills such as counting, number recognition, shapes, identification of groups and classification, patterns, estimating, graphing and working with numbers. For more information regarding young children and math click here.

Science and Health in the Living World - Our Science program covers subject areas such as nature, energy, weather and many others. Our children even have their very own vegetable garden in our preschool playground. They are active participants in working to grow the vegetables to help them learn about growth, nature and healthy eating. For more information young children and Science and Health in the Living World visit www.childrensgardennetwork.org and www.kidsgardening.org

Social and Emotional - We utilize a program called Conscious Discipline® to promote children’s successful acquisition of social-emotional skills. It is nationally recognized and widely used in early childhood programs and K-12 academic achievements. A large part of a child’s ability to be successful in preschool, elementary school and beyond is their social skills. We include a variety of activities into our daily routines that help children develop the skills of managing of their emotions, caring, empathy, and a sense of community.