Our Philosophy
At Grace Preschool we believe that all children are curious, capable and competent (and creative! and compassionate!). We seek to provide a learning environment where children are called to explore the world around them in meaningful and holistic ways. Through this exploration, we continue strengthening children’s innate love of learning and help build social skills for school and life. Children at Grace Preschool will hear about God’s never ending, never changing love and will explore how to share this love with the world around them. Students are supported and challenged as they develop across all domains of growth. We strive to provide an inclusive and welcoming environment for all children and work actively to learn more about what this means.
Our Curriculum
At Grace Preschool we are inspired by the Reggio Emilia philosophy and use the Emergent Curriculum. Teachers work to observe students and use their emerging interests and budding skills to develop curriculum. We build experiences around authentic expression of skills and encourage and celebrate learning at all points on the continuum of development. Following the child’s lead allows us to create meaningful opportunities for growth and allows children to experience the innate value of skills such as reading, writing and working together.
We set up our classroom environment to help support growth across domains providing areas designed to encourage practicing fine motor skills, social-emotional play, artistic expression, dramatic expression, reading, writing, number exploration and more. Our environment becomes another teacher by drawing students in to explore and build important skills through their play.
Our work is process focused. We learn about each child’s development while encouraging confidence when allowing children to make decisions about their work. The final product, while often beautiful, isn’t where the learning takes place. Students are welcome to choose where to play and this may be reflected in the amount of product that comes home to your house. Remember that all students are working hard during the day at preschool. We use our classroom blog, updated weekly, to share the variety of growth and experiences that may not have tangible evidence. While enrolled at Grace Preschool please take time to check out our blog and celebrate all the amazing growth your child is experiencing at school.
Our classroom is multi-age. This better facilitates approaching growth on a continuum. It allows teachers to meet each child where they are developmentally and work to differentiate for each individual regardless of age. Our multi-age classroom also affords each child the opportunity to learn from and teach to their peers. Multi-age learning welcomes diversity and better reflects the world in which we live, giving children more skills to be a part of a community.
The role of the teacher at Grace Preschool is that of a facilitator and co-learner. Teachers observe, document and plan for students based on the needs we see on a day-to-day basis. We know children come to our preschool already full of knowledge and that they use these skills to continue to construct new and deeper knowledge. Teachers come beside students as we learn together about the incredible, complex and mysterious world in which we live. Teachers do not see ourselves as sole proprietors of knowledge, but rather, work to model a lifelong love of learning, curiosity and wonder.
Grace Preschool does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, religion or ability. We welcome and celebrate diversity in all forms and believe that this diversity strengthens and adds beauty to our classroom.
We embrace inclusive education and hold steadfast to the belief that all children have the right to belong. We work to actively learn what welcoming and celebrating all people looks like and strive to improve our ability to do this well for students, staff, families and the larger community.