Program
Central Branch Preschool provides a program that encourages children to explore, discover, and develop under the guidance of experienced, caring teachers. Small groups of children give the staff time and energy to form close relationships with each child, to nurture love and trust, to share feelings and problems in what may be a first group experience outside of the home. In this setting, children develop social skills and gain confidence in themselves and their relation to the outside world.
Emphasis is on the whole child: physical, emotional, intellectual, and linguistic. Young children learn by doing, by actively working with things in their environment, using all their senses. Development of language is crucial at preschool age, both as vehicle for self-expression and communication, and as the foundation for later work in the language arts.
Creativity is experienced through painting, drawing, building, music, movement, dramatic play, and story-telling. Their initiative and self-motivation is encouraged by much individual choice of activities. In cooperative play, they teach and learn from each other. Those who show readiness for work at the symbolic level are given direction in reading, writing, and computation, but academics alone are not stressed. At Central Branch, we embrace the diversity of the school families and the community and this value is reflected in books, pictures, and other curriculum materials.
Classes meet in their own rooms, with access to shared indoor and outdoor spaces for active play. Children visit between groups occasionally and classes often join each other for outdoor activities. The program includes large and small muscle activities, and a balance of quiet and noisy play, indoor and outdoor pursuits, individualized free play as well as small group interaction.
Central Branch believes that play is serious business for children. It is their way of rehearsing the connections that will make life meaningful: links between feelings and language, between themselves and others who may look or act quite different. The teachers’ training and experience in early childhood education provides them with a thorough understanding of child development in an unselfconscious environment of freedom and respect between adults and children.
