WHAT IS PRESCHOOL?

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!

"Play is the foundation that supports the house of higher learning" -Lisa Murphy

MULTI-AGE CLASSROOMS

Many schools place children in age segregated classrooms. The Growing Place Preschool believes in multi-aged groupings where children from ages 1 to 2 for toddlers and 3 to 5 for preschool share the same classroom.This practice has many advantages including;

• 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

 We keep a low classroom ratio of 6 students to 1 teacher for our toddler room and 8 students to 1 teacher in our preschool classrooms.This is lower than the state required ratio of 13 to 1.This lower ratio allows for more individualized attention.

 Here at The Growing Place we strive to follow all criteria set forth byThe National Association for the Education of Young Children.You can learn more about this organization at www.naeyc.org

 Our Program is currently awaiting selection for Arizona's First Things First, Quality First star raiting system program. You can learn more about this Program at www.azftf.gov