Our Approach to
Your Child’s. . .

Social & Emotional
Development

From your child’s first day at Little Ivy, our teachers will guide them and provide the help your child needs to feel at home, learn to manage their emotions, work cooperatively with others and develop rewarding relationships with their classmates and teachers.

Our classrooms are communities where children feel secure and consider themselves to be valued members of a group. Our teachers nurture social competence by helping children understand how to treat other people well and how they want to be treated by others. Teachers will provide your child with opportunities for independence and interdependence.

At Little Ivy, we strive to get to know each child and their family. Our children (and their parents) feel that Little Ivy is a place they can call a home away from home. We believe that when we care about and support parents and staff, we provide a model for children of a positive and trusting community that supports them while in preschool and beyond.

Math
Development

Your child loves love to count and sort, add and subtract. They want to know the names and uses of colors, shapes and numbers. They can’t wait to play with puzzles and solve problems.

Each day our experienced teachers harness your child’s natural interests, providing well-planned lessons and experiences that teach the essential skills of problem-solving, reasoning, communicating, making connections and representing the world with numbers. Year-to-year as their skills grow, so do the challenges we provide.

We create a math-rich environment where everyday activities present us with opportunities to teach your child how specific math concepts work in the real world. Each classroom is also carefully designed with related activities to develop and practice their math skills,  including math manipulatives, block centers, puzzles and more.

Your child will learn about data analysis by counting the number of rainy days vs. sunny days and then creating a classroom chart. They’ll learn about patterns when teachers point out the stripes on their shirt. As they grow they’ll move on to work with a pattern manipulatives in the math center. While working on puzzles that get more complex as your child gains more skill, they’ll will learn about special relations.

As their skills grow still more, your child will learn to count, measure and analyze numbers. Year over year, your child’s math knowledge will grow as they prepare for a lifetime of math learning in school.

Literacy
Development

Literacy learning begins at birth. The more we read and talk to children, the better readers and writers they become later in life. For your child, books are a source of enjoyment, vocabulary and language. Your child’s reading journey should build from a love of stories and being read to, to a knowledge of print, letters and words, phonics and reading comprehension.

To foster a love a reading and being read to, we create warm and cozy spaces for your child to look at books and be read to. We read and re-read books so that your child has a chance to explore and memorize their favorite stories. We offer book listening centers, where your child can exert their growing independence by choosing and listening to stories on their own.

As your child gets older, every space in their classroom has pads of paper and crayons or pencils, so your child can begin to try the early scribbles that lead to writing. Your child’s well-planned day will include songs, poems, telling and re-telling stories (our older students also explore a secod language in our Spanish Everywhere program).

Imaginative play areas compliment the week’s theme so your child can take the time to explore the ideas and use the vocabulary talked about during group meeting time. Your child’s teacher with meet with students both individually and in small groups providing individualized instruction and helping to build a close relationship with each child.

Finally, your child will begin learning to write and recognize letters, letter and word sounds, and sight words as emerging readers ready for the transition to Kindergarten.

Science &
Experimenting

Children are natural scientists and curious researchers! They’re constantly exploring their world, testing their ideas about why and how things work, making adjustments and moving ahead to discover more

At Little Ivy, your child explores the things they are curious about and learns to develop their critical thinking skills.

Our expansive campus provides your child with many opportunities to explore and document the world around them both indoors and outdoors.

Your child will learn about themselves and their environment through fun explorations of physical science, earth science and life science. We’ll raise butterflies, hatch eggs, grow tomatoes, and more. Your child will learn the scientific method by asking questions, suggesting answers and then experimenting to see if those answers are correct.

We take the time to study topics in depth and encourage your child to ask questions and help them seek the answers to their questions. They’ll learn the scientific method by making guesses, asking questions, suggesting answers and then experimenting to see if those answers are correct.

Even our youngest children participate in helping to grow plants in our garden, exploring the soil, learning about wind and weather, and daily life-skills experiments, too,  including how to get a range of foods from spoon to mouth, what happens to their water when they turn over their cup and more!

Physical
Development

Our huge playground, playing field and expansive outdoor campus provide plenty of opportunities for your child to get fresh air, exercise and develop their coordination, discover the joys of teamwork.

Each day your child will participate in a planned, developmentally appropriate movement and games class. In addition to our teacher-led movement classes, your child will have plenty of time to run and play on the multiple play structures on our over 4,000 square foot playground—with a second play area just outside the door for our youngest students.

Our picnic grove and outdoor classroom space mean that your child will have plenty of time to enjoy the fresh air. They might eat lunch in our picnic grove, read a book in the Gazebo or do a nature study in our outdoor classroom.

We get outside in all types of weather! Our Muddy Buddy rainsuits let our children explore even if the day is dreary, We encourage parents to send in snow boots and warm coats so that the children can play in the snow. Little Ivy Alumni will tell you our favorite saying about the weather is “there is no bad weather, only bad clothing!”.

Of course, there are those times when the weather overcomes the clothing. On those days we offer an indoor movement program that includes dance and yoga.

Art & Music
Development

Our Art program provides your child with daily opportunities to design, create and explore. Our art centers are always well stocked with creative materials for your children to explore, such as different kinds and textures of paint, clay, found materials, painting implements, paper and cardboard. Art Centers are updated constantly with new and exciting materials for children to explore.

Our older preschoolers participate in our Art in the Afternoon program where they learn about famous artists, view their art and have the opportunity to create their own are using the style and materials that artist may have used.

At Little Ivy, music can be heard in our classrooms throughout the day. We use simple rhyming songs to help children transition between activities, we play Jazz, Classical, Ethnic and Children’s music each day so children are exposed to a wide variety of music. In addition, we have regular music lessons that pair reading books with making music on a variety of rhythm instruments.

Why We Do It. . .

As working parents, we searched high and low for a school for our sons that blended a high-quality education with a warm and caring environment. We wanted a place where we felt like part of a community and our work and our lives outside of school were valued and respected.

We wanted a place where children were valued and parents were supported. A place that understood that we wanted the best for our children and that we were working hard trying to balance parenthood and our careers.

When our youngest son was born, we decided that we would take our experience as educators and in the business world to build a school that fulfilled our goal of the best of both worlds – a world-class preschool that provided supportive childcare for working parents. Little Ivy Learning Center is that school.

Who We Are . .

When children have a learning environment that is nurturing, trusting and respectful, they will develop self-confidence in their ability to learn.