Our approach
In all of our programs, our days consist of imaginative free play, project based learning, and the purposeful work of caring for the body, mind, and heart. We follow the children’s interest to create curriculum that challenges their developmental growth and inspires learning. Story telling, music making, dancing, cooking, cleaning, handwork, and experiments in the arts and sciences are some of many of the activities we enjoy together.
Farm Days
Our farm days are provide rich opportunities for hands-on discovery, learning, playing, and socializing. We incorporate farming, building, and arts, recognizing that children use many different ways to show their understanding and express their thoughts and creativity. When each of these languages is valued and nurtured, the learning environment becomes a place of research, invention, and empathy, and expressive and poetic languages became part of the process by which knowledge is built.
Children arrive within a generous window of time and begin the day with unstructured play time. When everyone is present, we come together for the morning meeting, where we share ideas, stories, songs, problems, questions, and plans for the day. Following the morning meeting we embark on more play, and project based investigations exploring a wide range of materials and perspectives. The day begins at 9am and concludes at 1:30 pm, with an optional afternoon session from 1:30 until 4pm. |
Forest Days
In the tradition of European forest kindergartens, two days per week take place in a forest classroom within the East Bay Regional Parks. Children play in the creek, climb trees, dig in the soil, sing songs, snack and generally explore and learn in nature for the full day.
As with all of our programs, Forest days are child-guided, and our curriculum is based on emerging interests and and inquiry. Forest days take place rain or shine -- pack an extra set of clothes, and expect children to get wet and dirty! As with Learning Studio days, we begin at 9am and conclude at 1:30 pm, with an optional afternoon session from 1:30pm until 4pm.
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