Serving Pre-Kindergarten
(Pre-K and Kindergarten 2025-2026)
37 Park Terrace East
NY, NY 10034
The most important tool for our youngest learners to develop greater understanding of the world around them is the power of play! Through play, children explore what it means to be critical thinkers, risk takers, scientists, mathematicians, orators, writers, and good citizens.
In the Early Childhood Center, children are given the freedom to explore and to grow in a loving, nurturing, and exciting environment. Our learning program is centered around experiences, and led by the children, their interests, and their abilities.
We engage students through their senses; to have the richest learning experiences, they need to see, hear, touch, taste and smell. Play provides children with the opportunity to actively explore, manipulate and interact with their environment and each other, asking questions, problem solving, and constructing new ideas.
Our Early Childhood Center offers an environment devoted exclusively to our youngest learners designed to foster children’s physical, emotional, cognitive and social growth. Housed on a peaceful corner in a beautiful, newly reconstructed historic building, indoor spaces include state-of-the-art classrooms, sensory pathways, a multipurpose room for art, music, STEAM , movement and much more! Outdoor learning environments include a cushioned playground and community garden.
Our creative, bilingual English-Spanish immersion program is designed specifically for the needs of our students whether monolingual or bilingual. PreK lessons are offered in English and Spanish on alternative days.
We utilize the Every Child Ready, Apple Tree curriculum for our PreK learners and focus on four core areas of development:
Social Emotional Development
We design our program to build competent and confident individuals. Achieving a sense of self and building self esteem
Fostering a growth mindset
Taking responsibility for self and others
Behaving in a prosocial way
Physical Development
Through hands-on learning and play, we facilitate gross (large muscle) and fine (small muscle) motor skills. Physical development through motor skills allows children to take care of their personal needs, such as dressing themselves, and can promote positive social-emotional development and self confidence as children learn to take control of their actions
Cognitive Development
To help strengthen children's cognitive development -- their thinking and perception skills, and how they use what they learn, we promote:
Curiosity, wonder and expression
Learning and problem solving
Thinking critically and logically
Representing and thinking symbolically
Language Development
In early childhood, language becomes the main tool for establishing and maintaining relationships with adults and other children. This includes understanding and communicating through words, both spoken and written. Because words represent objects and ideas, language development is closely related to cognitive development. Language and literacy also go hand in hand: Listening, speaking, reading, and writing develop interdependently in children. Language development includes receptive language (understanding language) and expressive language (being able to communicate with words).
Students will have opportunities to learn both languages through
our immersion model.
Students learn SEL skills like self-awareness & management, social awareness, relationship skills, and resposible decision-making.
All classes are co-taught, with two teachers in each classroom.
We aim for a ratio of 2 adult
per 18 students.
We are proud to offer our families curriculum shares. We want our parents to understand the purpose and value of our curriculum. Sharing curriculum goals helps us to set expectations and align our teaching with learning outcomes and foster a supportive learning evironment.
At the Early Childhood Center, classes feature “learning centers” located intentionally throughout the space to help encourage appropriate explorations. Each center is driven by the curriculum and designed to promote a specific goal. Teachers further foster exploration by asking leading questions and directing children to notice and question what they are doing.
Each center encourages children to investigate and build on their social, language and cognitive skills together.
Children learn about shapes and sizes, problem solving and math concepts. A tremendous amount of thinking and decision making goes into block building. Block building encourages collaboration and teamwork. As children clean up blocks, they learn about sorting, categorizing, counting and the names of geometric shapes.
One of the most social areas of the classroom, the dramatic play center helps children learn to work together, share, explore their creativity, and use expressive and creative language. When children roleplay, they use past experiences to help re-enact these roles and are encouraged to think about different possibilities and outcomes.
The art center offers many different materials for children to express their creativity, including, crayons, paint, and collage. A favorite in many classrooms – loose parts, are materials used as non- permanent art that can be manipulated and changed. Teachers photograph the finished projects and encourage children to verbally expand on what they have made and even tell stories associated with their art. The focus on the process gives children the freedom to make independent choices take creative risks.
A love of books is the first step in early literacy. Each of our classrooms has a library center dedicated to exposing children to literature in both English and Spanish. The library houses classroom favorites as well as books related to the Apple Tree curriculum, current events and themes. Children are encouraged to take books on their own and “read” them to themselves or sometimes with a friend.
The STEAM center – our Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics classroom – is an exhilarating space of learning, discovery, questioning and inquiry. Children explore with materials including magnets, a light table, large Geoboard, Lego, tunnels and tubes and a recycling center. Encouraged to think, figure things out, work together, take a risk to try something new, children strengthen critical investigative skills as they don’t test the outcomes of their efforts.
The Early Childhood Center features a safe, off-street outdoor playground with soft-landing flooring. Teachers and coaches are trained to foster productive and positive use of this inspiring space for children to climb, swing, and jump into action!