The Tarrytown Nursery School grounds its curriculum in a Learning Through Play philosophy. Play is the work of childhood—the chief vehicle for the development of imagination, intelligence, language, social skills, and perceptual-motor abilities in young children. The focus of the program is the individual growth of each child through exploration, experimentation, and first-hand experience.
Learning Through Play is a developmental, child-centered approach. Children learn to communicate and thrive in their environment through the joining of play and language: through play, both vocabulary and thought are extended and enriched. Play allows children to learn from their actions and experiences, to solve problems, and to develop self-confidence, creativity, and independence. In cooperative play, children learn about the nature of social interactions. The Tarrytown Nursery School program is designed to facilitate this growth. Each classroom is set up in different activity centers, and periods of free play encourage children to make their own choices and follow their own inspiration. Structured group activities complement these periods by supporting development of a variety of learning concepts and social skills. The environment is supportive, friendly, and enthusiastic. Teachers and parents actively work together to promote learning for the whole child.
Play is the foundation from which children venture out to investigate their world and their relationships with others. As children mature, they assimilate and integrate their play experiences. Social, cognitive, language, and motor skills all benefit from the practice that children get while they are playing. Tarrytown Nursery School students “graduate” with excellent social, academic, and expressive skills that prepare them especially well for kindergarten and beyond.
For more information about Learning Through Play, see Beginnings and Beyond, 3rd edition, by Ann Gordon and Kathryn Williams Browne, and The Child by Judith Rich Harris and Robert M. Liebert.
Toddler Curriculum
The Toddler class is a safe place for children to explore and make sense of their world. For children at this young age, the goal is to provide a social setting in the most inviting and nurturing manner. We tackle difficult concepts for toddlers, such as “If my mommy leaves me here, will she come back for me?” and “How do I get a toy that I want from that other child?” Over time, the children learn to play cooperatively with other students and to lay foundations for future relationships. The “child’s play” that goes on in the toddler class is an opportunity for children to create, discover, and experiment. When play is supported and allowed to emerge, the toddler begins to learn about a variety of concepts that lead inevitably to intellectual curiosity and development.
The Toddler class engages students in activities that promote development of the following skill areas:
Creative. The art area is a wonderful opportunity for children to express their imagination and individuality, and it also develops fine motor skills and reading fundamentals in the process. Children learn to identify shapes of letters in personal drawings, differentiate foreground and background, learn about color by mixing paint, and learn spatial relationships in gluing projects. The book area is a quiet place where a child can sit and listen to a favorite book, and be comforted by the closeness of others. Or she can sit tall and proud, sure that she is reading the words of the books all by herself—the whole time developing pre-reading skills by turning the pages in the right direction and scanning the words and images from left to right.
Expressive. The dramatic play area is a place where children can recreate their world as a source of comfort or to express fear. They can imitate Daddy or Mommy going to work and then they are not the ones who are left behind. They can be the doctor and give someone else a shot or apply a band-aid.
Cognitive. The block area offers an introduction to balance, spatial relationships, and cause and effect. (For example, “How can I place a block across two other blocks to make a bridge if they are too far apart?” “How high can I build the block tower before it falls down, and what happens if I drive a car into it?”)
Enrichment activities for the Toddler class include music, movement, cooking, and daily outdoor play.
Pre-School Curriculum
The Pre-School class emphasizes exploration, experimentation, cooperation, and creativity. Children are encouraged to explore the world around them and to interact with others in productive and cooperative ways. Activities are integrated around units of study, including colors, the community and jobs people do, the farm, the insect world, the ocean world, and seasons and holidays. The arts and crafts table is open throughout the play period, and each art project is tied to the unit of study. At story and song time, the students gather to work on counting, rhyming, and reading comprehension. At table time, the teachers work with students on fine-motor skills like cutting, drawing, and doing puzzles, and guide the students in organized group activities that reinforce cognitive skills including colors, shapes, and matching. Throughout the Pre-School curriculum, the development of social skills is central. The program develops students’ abilities to cooperate in a group, wait their turns, share, make friends, and expand their social boundaries.
The Pre-School class engages students in activities that promote development of the following skill areas:
Language. Interactions throughout the Pre-School program are designed to develop the children’s language and pre-reading skills. At story and song time each day, students have encounters with a diverse range of literary materials, including stories, poems, finger plays, and song plays. The book area is a quiet place where students can look at books, be read to, or tell a story to a friend.
Science. Touching, looking with magnification, and weighing enable children to explore the natural world. Small pets in the classroom allow children to touch, observe, and care for animals. The water table enables experimentation with cause and effect through floating, pouring, and sinking, and the sand table reinforces the concept of object permanence through the actions of filling, dumping, and uncovering.
Social Studies. Dress up, pretend play, and housekeeping play enable children to dramatize different roles, learn negotiation skills, and stretch their imaginations about the things they can be and do when they grow up.
Practical Mathematics. Block building fosters experimentation with weight ratios and practices hand-eye coordination. Unit blocks provide concrete examples of relative measurement. The manipulative table includes puzzles, matching games, and objects for lacing, stringing, and sorting—activities that develop students’ understanding of spatial relationships, patterning, and categorization, as well as fine motor skills.
Enrichment activities for the Pre-School class include music, movement, cooking, community field trips, and daily outdoor play.
Pre-K Curriculum
The Pre-K class follows an integrated curriculum that emphasizes self-expression, creativity, observation, experimentation, and cooperation. In preparation for kindergarten, the class fosters the confidence and adaptability needed to thrive in a classroom setting. To help students interact productively and cooperatively with peers and teachers, the Pre-K class works on negotiating skills and conflict resolution. The children are encouraged to explore their imaginations and work out their social concerns through role-playing. Weekly Show and Tell helps children to become comfortable in front of a group.
The Pre-K class engages students in activities that promote development of the following skill areas:
Language. The children write and illustrate a book each month, such as My Favorite Color and I Like Halloween. Language arts charts are used to help children increase their vocabulary. In daily circle and story times, the children are exposed to a variety of literary materials in different genres, including many poems and finger plays, and encouraged to participate actively in the reading experience. They are asked to help predict what is going to happen next, and encouraged to act out stories at the felt board and during class using different props. Sit-upons with the child’s name are used to help with name recognition. In a unit on comparative literature, the class compares and contrasts five versions of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and five versions of The Three Little Pigs. In another extended project, each child creates a snow creature out of his or her footprint, and then creates a fairytale about the creature. The class then creates a fairytale as a group and the book is published. Ferdinand the Alphabet Frog visits for ten weeks—each week introducing a different letter. During a letter week, everything in the class revolves around the letter—crafts, science, books, finger plays, and songs—and the children work on a Ferdinand book, picking a picture and writing the word for each letter of the week.
Science. The class conducts one experiment each week revolving around the curriculum and what the children are interested in. The focus of the science curriculum is to create a sense of wonder about their world, and we work on the concept of why and how something happens. Basic scientific principles are discussed, including evaporation, acid-base, and biological life cycles—concepts that are literally brought alive in the classroom as we hatch butterflies and chickens.
Social Studies. In dress up, pretend play, and housekeeping play, the students dramatize different roles with increasing complexity and fluency, develop negotiation skills, and stretch their imaginations about the things they can be and do when they grow up.
Mathematics. The class works on size order, grouping, patterning, one-to-one correspondence, sorting, and simple analogies. We chart and graph the weather monthly. The children learn the days of the week through a daily calendar. Through cooking projects, the children learn to follow a recipe and to measure ingredients—teaching the concept of whole and half (stone soup, pumpkin soup, and Red Riding Hood’s muffins are a few favorites).
Enrichment activities for the Pre-K class include music, movement, cooking, community field trips, and daily outdoor play.
