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About Us

Mission

Our mission is to provide a nurturing, creative environment where children are fully invested in their learning and understand that their thoughts and ideas are valued and respected. We are committed to educating the whole child — their entire emotional, social, physical, and intellectual being — while reinforcing each child’s integrity as a learner, a leader, and a classmate.

Philosophy

At CCNS, we believe children gain confidence and become lifelong learners when their curiosities are piqued and their individual interests are nurtured. Children grow and develop as they explore exciting, well-planned, and open-ended learning opportunities for imaginative play, art exploration, scientific discovery, social interaction, problem solving, writing, music, movement, literacy, cooking, math, and outdoor fun.

“Play is an important vehicle for developing self-regulation as well as for promoting language, cognition, and social competence. Play gives children opportunities to develop physical competence and enjoyment of the outdoors, understand and make sense of their world, interact with others, express and control emotions, develop their symbolic and problem-solving abilities, and practice emerging skills.”

The National Association for the
Education of Young Children

Learning Through Play

Learning through play is uniquely at the heart of the CCNS experience because play is the main way preschoolers learn and develop ideas about the world. We offer a nurturing, creative, and carefully prepared environment and opportunities for open­-ended play which provide a medium for children to explore new concepts and social situations, develop important skills and understand that their thoughts and ideas are valued and respected.

Our emergent-based curriculum builds upon children’s natural curiosity and interests. Skilled teachers carefully observe their students at play then respond to, extend and guide that play to help children learn more. As they see an area of interest develop, teachers design curriculum and activities to challenge the students’ thinking and facilitate a discovery of their questions and wonders.

When a topic of interest lends itself to further exploration, teachers and students work together to plan out a more robust project of study. Students ask questions, gather resources, conduct “fieldwork,” document their findings and report on what they discovered. This project approach at CCNS delivers on important development objectives while deeply engaging children, building motivation for continued questioning and fostering a life-long love of learning and exploration.