Preschool

2 years 10 months – 5 years

Creative Learning Center offers a flexible preschool program designed to meet the needs of a diverse community of parents. Parents can choose from three, four or five mornings per week as well as adding our exciting afternoon enrichment programs based on your needs and your child’s interests. We accommodate working parents with a full day program plus flexible options for before and after care. Call us to discuss your specific needs and we’ll try to accommodate your particular situation.

Mixed Age Groupings

To encourage self-esteem and competence, our classrooms have mixed-aged groupings.  We understand that children do not all learn at the same rate or in the same manner and we make sure that each individual’s needs are met.  Mixed aged grouping encourages cooperative learning, leadership and pro-social behaviors.

Certified Teachers

In our preschool classrooms, our certified early childhood educators develop creative, meaningful learning activities that reach the hearts and minds of our young students. Because of our low student-teacher ratio, the teachers enjoy working with the children in small groups or individually every day. Our reading and mathematics curriculums are differentiated according to ability levels and the children are encouraged to work at the edge of their developing abilities.

Play

Play is an essential part of our daily program because we believe that play is at the heart of all learning. Through play, our students make sense of the world and their place within it. Play encourages children to develop important language and cognitive skills as well as social-emotional competence. When children are playing, they are actively engaged and intrinsically motivated-both qualities that are proven to lead to school success. Children are figuring out their own rules and using problem-solving strategies to do so.  They are learning how to cooperate and communicate ideas with each other. Language skills are fostered as the children negotiate roles in play. Through pretend play, they are able to work through feelings, anxieties, and fears.  This fantasy play helps them gain mastery of their feelings and a stronger sense of self!

Research-Proven Curriculum

We plan a challenging curriculum that is integrated across disciplines such as reading, mathematics, science, social studies, cooking, art, drama, and creative movement activities.  These themes extend from two to six weeks in length and are guaranteed to excite your child about the world around him or her.  We follow the philosophies of Piaget, Vygotsky and Dewey in that we expand your child’s world by offering developmentally-appropriate content that is challenging, yet supported.  While children are busy playing in our various learning centers in each classroom, we recognize that the activities are helping to develop different areas of your child’s developing brain.

Focus on the Arts

At Creative Learning Center, the arts are an avenue for authentic self- expression and communication. The art process is central to young children’s development in all areas. In our Art Studio, the preschoolers work in small groups with a certified art teacher /artist who engages the children in the creative process. Diverse artistic materials encourage our students to explore and discover! Daily music, drama, and open-ended movement experiences support the child’s emerging sense of self, while enhancing creative expression.

Primary Learning Community

Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd Grade For Advanced Learners

Our Primary Learning Community is a full-day mixed-age classroom for five to seven year olds, especially geared to learners with advanced potential. It is an engaging and caring community of learners in which all children feel accepted and respected. Our dramatically reduced student-teacher ratio allows us to work with our students in small groups or individually every day.  Through developmentally-appropriate assessments, we select students who we believe will thrive within our community. Our class is limited to sixteen students with two master teachers plus an art educator.

The PLC program focuses on intrinsic motivation, meaning motivating from within. Learning occurs when children are motivated not by external motivations such as grades, tests, rewards, recognition. Instead, learning occurs when it stems from a true interest in what they are learning or from a need that they themselves have chosen as important to address.

Learning is centered around inviting students to think deeply about issues, concentrate not only on the skills and facts but within a framework or context where there is a purpose for learning the material. Many times this type of learning involves an interdisciplinary approach. Whether exploring animals in the African savannah or discovering Monet’s works of arts, our students are using their intrinsic creative thinking to engage with new ideas, test them, and share what comes of the process. We recognize and celebrate the importance of critical thinking and inquiry in addition to the acquisition of knowledge.

Our progressive environment supports active learning. Students actively participate in constructing their own learning process. This may include contributing to the curriculum, asking questions and looking for the answers, thinking of possibilities, and evaluating their own learning. The emphasis is on active child-centered learning. Research teaches us that children learn best when they are given multiple and varied “hands-on” learning opportunities.

We take our learners seriously! We look at the spectrum of different learners in the classroom, and individualize the lessons to meet each learner’s needs. We follow Gardner’s theories of multiple intelligences and support each child’s giftedness. From solid research at Harvard and Bank Street College of Education, we know that all learners thrive when the material being taught is both challenging and meaningful. Our students are challenged to work at the edge of their developing abilities, while being supported and guided by their teachers.

Literacy instruction is designed to be both joyful and rigorous in our Primary Learning Community. We offer our students a rich variety of language experiences to kindle their enthusiasm for reading and writing. The children are exposed to a rich variety of literature encompassing award-winning picture books, biography, non-fiction, poetry, folk tales, and stories from many cultures. Following the most current literacy research, we utilize a balanced literacy program which strikes a balance between both whole language and phonics. The strongest elements of each are incorporated to guide students toward proficient and lifelong reading and writing. At CLC, we utilize the Wright Group’s Gear Up Guided Reading Program and create engaging lessons that aim to expand the child’s full set of communication skills–speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Whether we are playing a rhyming game or acting out a scene from a favorite book, our goal is the same: to meet each child where he or she is and to nurture a lasting love of language and literature.

Through our Writer’s Workshop, the children are encouraged to express their own ideas and stories. We strongly believe that every child has a voice as a writer! The children draw, dictate, and write about their experiences. The teachers support the development of the children’s spelling abilities from temporary “invented” spelling toward the goal of conventional spelling. Working with the teachers during small group work, children develop phonics skills, word recognition, understanding of punctuation and capitalization-all through fun, creative activities. There are varied opportunities for the children to practice their skills and each child is able to work at her or his own pace. The children enjoy sharing their writing with each other and are encouraged to reflect on the process each session.

Using the Everyday Mathematics approach, our math curriculum offers a strategic, articulated sequence of topics that are developed in depth to allow true mastery. Children are given opportunities to investigate, discover, explore, and apply their own solutions to mathematical problems. All strands of mathematics (from numerals and addition to geometry and measurement) are fully developed through small group lessons and developmentally-appropriate games. Students focus on key concepts by starting with concrete representations through an extensive use of manipulatives and hands-on activities, moving onto pictorial illustrations of problems, and ending with abstract representations such as number sentences. Our classroom teachers challenge and support individual growth while focusing on problem solving and critical thinking.

We are pleased to offer one of the best art programs in Monmouth County! In our art studio, the students work with our talented art studio educator daily to enhance their creative expression. Our students become familiar with a wide range of materials, techniques, and pictorial concepts. Along with thematic-based projects, the children enter the art studio to become fluent with the “language” of image and object making, to participate joyfully in the artistic process, and become more aware of their own unique vision. Through small group instruction, the children are engaged in open-ended activities that encourage understanding of all the art elements, including line, shape, color, texture, value, and form.

Our music, movement, and physical education programs are integrated into our daily curriculum. The joy of movement and the development of spatial awareness, balance, and coordination are emphasized. With rhythm sticks, musical instruments, yoga activities, drama, and open-ended creative movement, we tap into our students’ intrinsic motivation and offer them new and exciting ways to express themselves. We often connect our music and movement curriculum to our math, science, and literacy activities and find that these connections build strong cognitive understandings.

In addition, our primary students are active participants in an intergenerational arts program that spans the entire school year.  Working collaboratively with a group of seniors at a nearby nursing home, our students “teach” their senior friends about master artists and then create an art project in the style of each artist.   Our program is now in its fifth consecutive year.  Our research has provided strong evidence that, as a result of these quality interactions, our students develop acceptance, compassion and understanding of the elderly, while also experiencing the joy of community service. In the professional education community, our work has been celebrated at various national conferences.

Field Trips

At Creative Learning Center, our field trip program unlocks the door to adventure and meaningful learning. Field trips encourage children to connect to the larger community and foster an understanding of others through fun-filled and exciting experiences. In planning our field trips, our goal is to open our students up to new multicultural experiences such as art museums, ethnic restaurants, and historical sites.  We often attend live theater, integrating musicals and dramas into our everyday curriculum.

Some of the ways our field trips integrate into our units of study:

• After studying princesses, knights, and castles, our Magical Mystery Tour enrichment students took a trip to Medieval Times. Our students enjoyed a typical medieval feast as they cheered for the knights jousting on horses!

• After studying African animals and learning songs in Swahili in World Travelers enrichment class, we took our students to see The Lion King on Broadway.

• During our Fizz Bubble Pop class, junior scientists were entranced by the stars at a local planetarium and learned more about their bodies as their toured a hospital and met a surgeon.

• After having an author study in our preschool classes, we enjoyed a musical performance of one of our favorite stories. Recently, we enjoyed a musical performance of Alexander and The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day presented by TheaterWorks at Count Basie Theater in Red Bank.

• As part of the Hello America class studies of colonial life, the students visited the Rebecca Murray Home in Middletown, where they participated in colonial chores and were guided through an authentic colonial house and barn.