Curriculum & Activities:

The Nursery uses The Creative Curriculum® along with other educational resources to make your child’s class a fun, informative environment.  The Creative Curriculum® is a framework that emphasizes social and emotional development to help children acquire skills essential for success in school and life.  The Creative Curriculum® is not a script for teachers to follow along.  It provides suggestions and instruction, but the teachers have the flexibility to create their own lesson plans based on the needs of the children.  This means that although we might teach similar topics each year, the goals and content varies based on the learning styles of the children.

Children are taught skills through thematic topics such as All About Me, Boxes, or Dinosaurs.  Units can last 3 weeks to several months, depending on the children’s interest and curiosity.  Toddler teachers typically choose seasonal and concrete topics while preschool and pre-kindergarten teachers may poll their children to determine a theme.  Within each topic we cover many skills.  Three areas of concentration are:

• Self-help Skills – children learn daily life skills such as identifying their belongings, putting on their coats, and tying their shoes.  This also includes learning self-regulation, persistence, and about one’s self.
• Social Skills – children learn to get along with others, play cooperatively, gain control of physical impulses, and problem-solving techniques.
• Communication Skills – this includes both receptive (listening) and expressive (speaking) skills.  Children learn to express negative emotions without harming themselves or others, follow directions, give instruction to peers, and become an independent thinker.

Our goal is to help develop a well-rounded child who is curious, self-confident, and a good citizen.  Of course in order to do this we must present a well-rounded curriculum which integrates emergent reading, math, and handwriting skills, physical activities, art & music appreciation through hand-on activities.

Teachers also use the Battery Park City neighborhood to enhance the learning experience.  When studying transportation, they might take a walk to look at the boats, cars and trucks.  When studying community helpers, they might go to the local pizzeria to make pizza or the nearby firehouse to see the engines and firefighters.  Pre-kindergarten children can take private bus field trips to a museum, farm or planetarium.  Parents are encouraged to chaperone trips outside neighborhood.

Parents and teachers meet and together determine goals for the child.  Teachers observe the child during play and daily activities then write lesson plans which challenge the child to reach these goals. Teachers keep anecdotal records, samples of work, and photos of progress.  They place this information into a portfolio which is shared with parents during Parent-Teacher Conferences held in November, March, and June.