Our classroom setup seamlessly flows between the indoor and outdoor spaces fostering the natural connection between the earth and the child creating a lifelong love of nature. Children have the opportunity to explore their environment and its functions at their own pace, making discoveries that are meaningful to them. The innate curiosity within children leads them to observe and learn about the world around them.
We believe children learn best by doing. Our classrooms are designed to facilitate active thinking and experimenting. Children are given opportunities to discover how things work, and to learn first hand about the world in which we live. There are a myriad of opportunities for students to explore, using all their senses and using real materials.
Each year of life brings exciting challenges for children. Our dramatic play & creative expression program empowers students to express their feelings safely and creatively. Dramatic play is a valuable way for children to interact with others collaboratively and helps children develop confidence, creativity, and improve emotional and social skills. Creative expression allows each child to shine and gifts them with the knowledge that their ideas matter and are valuable to others as well.
Our daily school experience is a joyful one filled with music and movement. Music promotes a deep sense of wellbeing and body awareness and helps develop the brain for math and other future academic subjects. Our interactive music curriculum is a magical journey into the fundamentals of music. Our varied movement programs ensure the development of strong muscles, creating the foundation for future opportunities in dance and sports.
Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math are woven into all aspects of our student’s day. Our class environment is designed to nurture children’s innate wonder about the world around them. Our inquiry-based learning approach combined with the power of children’s curiosity develops critical thinkers and self-motivated learners. Children learn best by doing. Our classrooms are designed to facilitate active thinking and experimenting. There is a myriad of opportunities for students to explore, using all their senses and using real materials. Our students are excited and enthusiastic about learning and the acquisition of knowledge. Through experiments and discovery, they become well-prepared and experienced scientists ready to assume the challenges of Kindergarten and beyond.
“Educate a child, and you educate the world.” Our school is founded on this principle, and we view each child as an entire universe, celebrating the uniqueness of each individual. Our school is grounded in the Jewish values of kindness and responsibility to ourselves, others, and our environment. These values come alive in our classroom, with creativity, sensitivity, and inclusivity. Our values and traditions help cultivate a joyful sense of personal identity, meaning, and purpose in our students. These lessons are woven naturally throughout our curriculum, becoming a treasured part of our students’ experiences.
Our teachers and students partner together to navigate social experiences. We aim to nurture children’s innate empathy and concern for others, as well as to help develop appropriate language and dialogue. We help each child find their inner voice to guide them through social interactions. This helps children feel safe in new social situations.
We believe that every child is an artist. We strive to nurture each child’s innate creativity through a variety of open-ended art experiences. Our students choose from a range of safe and natural art materials to handle and manipulate, developing their fine motor muscles. Children are given the freedom to explore colors and shapes while learning about line, form, space, symmetry, repetition, and variation. They develop their aesthetic preferences with a wide variety of materials including paper, paints, crayons, markers, pens, wire, and clay. Art is woven into our learning environment as a tool to develop ideas and learn about the world around them.
Reading opens up children to worlds filled with beloved characters, imaginary places, and the opportunity to learn about the world around us. Using books and stories, puppets, music, and other props, our teachers encourage a love for books and foster the appropriate pre-reading skills. Early literacy exposure stimulates brain development and helps build key language, literacy, and social skills. Our students experience journaling first through pictures, then words. The journaling process is a beautiful way to teach children that their thoughts are valuable and their words matter. Journaling allows the children to look back at their own experiences and helps develop reflective thinking.