About Us

Mission Statement

Our mission is to provide a safe environment for children to develop socially, creatively, emotionally, physically and cognitively through the various programs we offer. Our facility is specially designed for young children and offers well-equipped indoor and outdoor play spaces. We include a variety of families and are delighted to have children with varying ages and abilities.

Philosophy

At New Canaan Community Nursery School we believe that children learn through active exploration that takes place during their play. Our role is to provide children with developmentally appropriate experiences that will prepare them for kindergarten. Our center-based classrooms provide opportunities for children to make choices, learn to socialize, function in a group setting, and become independent and confident individuals.

With our highly educated staff, we strive to create a learning environment where the children can feel that they have ownership of their daily activities. Ownership of ones surroundings allows the children to become increasingly vested in their learning. Daily open-ended learning experiences promote the children’s ability to problem solve, negotiate, hypothesize, predict and think outside the box.

Our objectives are:

    1. To establish and carry out a child-centered curriculum based upon observing, understanding and applying each child’s individual skills and interests.
    2. To plan a broad range of related experiences individually and age appropriate, based upon what children are discussing and creating.
    3. To respect and acknowledge that each child is unique with an individual pattern, pace of growth, personality, learning style and family background, which is reflected both in the curriculum and adult interactions with the child.
    4. To promote their emerging ability to make friends, engage in social and conversational interactions, and support their journey from parallel to cooperative play.
    5. To encourage a natural interest in books and stories, name recognition and the development of crucial pre-reading and pre-writing skills through our print rich environment.
    6. To encourage parent involvement and to provide children and parents with appropriate support as needed.

"The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery."

Mark Van Doren