Our vision is to provide an enriching, exciting, and enchanting playschool where children are encouraged to follow their own interests, at their own pace, to foster creative, passionate, and self-directed life-long learners.
We believe in providing inspired, rich learning spaces, where children can explore natural elements, arts and crafts, and interrelate with children and adults alike.
We believe in treating children with the same respect as adults, honoring their choices and inspirations.
We believe in protecting our environment and passing this love and responsibility along to the next generations. We practice recycling, re-using, reclaiming discarded items for art and decoration, using energy efficient appliances and lighting. We use cloth hand towels and welcome cloth diapers.
We believe teachers are co-learners, observing, facilitating, deepening, and reporting children's exploration. The teachers at Green Apple Garden are educators, artists, musicians, and visionaries. They facilitate days of beauty and joy for every child. Children may choose from a variety of art materials or projects, structured group times, or from a variety of educational materials. Teachers document each child's progress with photos and captions to keep in a journal for each child.
We believe children need to spend as much time outdoors as possible, at minimum 2-3 hours per day. We believe in providing children many opportunities to get muddy, messy, dirty, and wet as they create with hands and tools and re-purposed elements. We offer a beautifully collected outdoor classroom where children may explore all pre-academic areas deeply enmeshed in play-based learning.
We believe in engaging children in practical life activities such as cooking, sweeping, vacuuming, washing, and cleaning.
We believe in eating locally and organically as much as possible as well as harvesting food from our kitchen garden. We only use organic methods for all landscaping and yard work. We are committed to healthy, non-toxic childhoods. We strive to stay away from plastics as much as possible.
We believe in bringing together the unique talents and contributions of teachers, parents, children, and community members with projects and visits.
Our curriculum follows play-based principles of early childhood education and we are inspired mostly by the Reggio Emilia philosophy. Parts of our curriculum also mirror the Waldorf philosophy. Underlying all of our curriculum is a reverence for Mother Earth and a deep human connection to the seasons. Our curriculum is nature-based and arts-based, meaning environmental education and arts education are always integrated into the lessons.
Pre-academic skills are embedded in our activity choices and based upon the emerging interests of children in our program. Many pre-academic skills are practiced within the experience of play.
Children's days are balanced with developmentally appropriate exploration time, small group time, large group circle time, and offering of activity choices.
Children learn to make independent choices as well as how to be members of a community.
Our rainbow honors our belief in welcoming all cultures, traditions, families of different genders, race, ethnic origin, disability, age, nationality, national origin, sexuality, religion or belief, marital status and social class. This is a cornerstone of our education program and coupled with learning another language helps teach children to be a citizen of our rapidly shrinking world.
Green Apple Garden teachers and staff know there is always more to learn about ourselves, about children, about teaching, about parenting, and about the world. We work creatively toward solving problems and are inspired by the following list of thinkers:
Richard Louv
Lifeways of North America
Rudolf Steiner
Reggio Emilia
Faber & Mazlish
Alfie Kohn
Kim John Payne
David Elking
Brazleton
Sears
Rusty Keeler
Kinderwald Movement
We offer:
Half and Full Day Preschool, ages 30 months -6 years
Mixed-Age Childcare for ages 12-29 months
Drop-in care available for enrolled students
Flexible options/schedules
Comparable rates
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