Preschool Program

.

.

.

.

.

The program at the Preschool Center is dedicated to exceptionally skillful and professional care, nurturing, and optimal development of young children. Teachers work with small groups of children, and each child has a primary teacher. Each classroom has a teaching team of at least three fully qualified teachers.

Each child has a Home-School Journal on the C5 Private Website that is a private channel for communicating essential information between the child’s parents and the child’s primary teacher. The C5 Private Website also has a Portfolio for each child that is accessible to the parents and the child’s extended family. The Website also has a wealth of information available to families and extended families about each child’s learning group, the Center, and the program in general.

The ratios of teachers to children at the Preschool Center vary by age group and are 1:6 for the two Toddler Classrooms and 1:8 for the two Preschool Classrooms. There are also additional support staff members who assist the teachers and the learning groups.

Our staff is highly trained, well schooled, very experienced, and meets all of the California requirements for core courses in early childhood and for Community Care Licensing. Most have Bachelors Degrees in Early Childhood Education or related fields, and some have Masters Degrees.

The same philosophy and general practices are applied at both of our centers, with adjustments for different ages, learning styles, personalities, temperament, and readiness of each child and learning group.

Our philosophical and practical influences are from the best practices around the world and include the pre-primary schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, the PITC Program developed by the California Department of Education and the Western Regional Educational Labs (WestEd); Richard and Patricia Schmuck’s work in Group Process and Organization Development for Schools; the constructivist, social-constructivist, and systems thinking theories of John Dewy, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Jerome Bruner, and Howard Gardner; and the comprehensive strategies and techniques of Partnership with Children and Community of Learners developed over a 30 year period by C5’s Director of Learning.

The primary emphasis is on health, safety, building effective relationships and social experiences, and supporting and facilitating optimal development of each child without getting in their way or pushing them into areas ahead of their readiness or falling behind them in our assessments or interactions with each child.

In all aspects of Preschool Center operations, we maintain the characteristics of continuously learning and improving; and, where the atmosphere is joyful, exciting, caring, aesthetic, compelling, and rich with creativity, surprises, and the promise of great potential.

Preschool students experience a wide range of materials and processes as they explore their interests, fascinations, and natural inclinations for development. Examples are experiences with textures; sounds; colors; shapes; patterns; rhythms; paints; clay; water; light and shadow; drawing; body movement; gestures and sign language; music; photography; hearing stories; reading with teachers; assembling and disassembling; sculpturing; discovering hidden things; introduction to literacy, math, and science; and, working with multiple media and processes.

Our emergent curriculum is based on primarily children’s interests and fascinations, with influences from their home cultures and occasional special offerings from the community. Toddlers engage in extensive explorations that lead to projects lasting weeks and months. The preschool aged children collaborate on effective group processes and consensus decision-making and pursue projects that are complex, comprehensive, multi-media, and often last for several months. Usually, with teachers suggestions on the C5 Private Website in the Weekly Plan, and at children’s requests, parents bring in materials weekly to support the projects that are evolving in each learning group in each classroom.

All students participate in the catered lunch program and healthy snacks made by the C5 staff that are included in their tuition. Accommodations are made for children on vegetarian and other special diets.

The center has a music program that is experienced daily, with a half hour session once a week of the world famous Music Together program that is led by musical teachers on-staff who have been trained by Music Together based in Princeton, New Jersey. Families also receive three times a year a song book and CDs of the Music Together music for the current collection, as well as participate if they wish and are able in the regular weekly sessions and in classroom and community-wide sign-alongs about six times a year.

C5 has a Creative Movement and Dance Program that was developed by C5 in concert with professional dancers and dancers on our staff. The children experience creative movement and dance daily; with a special half hour once a week of focused, graduated experiences. As in all C5 activities, parents are invited to participate.

Visiting Artists and Artists in Residence visit both C5 centers.

As a result of our continuing efforts in collaboration with children, parents, families, community members, and our colleagues in the field of education, children at C5 typically meet and exceed standard expectations for children their age and the requirements for kindergarten.