Preschool is a preparatory program for formal education. At the Growing Place Preschool our classroom environment and schedule are designed to help children practice and develop the skills they will need to succeed in Kindergarten. Here are just a few skills our daily activities cover.

• Critical thinking and problem solving skills
• Sharing an activity or task with one or more other children
• Confidence in the ability to work alone
• Understanding and following simple classroom rules
• Using words to solve peer and adult/child misunderstanding
• The ability to focus on an activity and follow directions
• Recognizing colors, shapes, letters, numbers
• Opportunities to practice developing large & fine motor skills
• The ability to experience uncomfortable emotions and express them constructively
• Logical-mathematical thinking including comparing, sorting, counting, graphing, etc
• Exploring and learning to love learning!

• Children gain experience interacting with others whose abilities and skills differ from their own, much like adults do.
• Children develop long term quality relationships with their teachers
• Learning is based on the individual, so no class levels are evident, therefore children are not held back, or rushed into the next class
• Enhanced self-esteem and effective learning from peer inter-dependence and modeling