Cupertino, CA
Cupertino Co-op Nursery School

We believe that children reach their fullest potential when they are able to develop a positive self-image. They can do this best in a safe, consistent, nurturing environment that is rich in opportunities for them to master tasks appropriate to their individual levels of development. These tasks support their intellectual development, social-emotional development, physical development and foster their creativity.

We know that children learn by doing. Through play, children interact with their surroundings and with other people, discovering relationships, deriving concepts and creating a reality that is unique to each child.

We believe that play is the most effective means available to young children to accomplish integration and growth. Our goal is to provide the time, space, materials and guidance needed by children to optimize their play experience.

We believe that parenting young children is a challenging role and that the skills of parenting can be shared and learned, facilitating a positive passage for both parent and child through this most important stage of a child's life.

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Our children are greeted at the front door by their teacher waiting for them.

They then come in, wash their hands, and then return to their teacher for a good morning hug and to put their name tag on. A child may then choose to participate in the game room, dress up room, block room or art studio.

The teacher rings the bells, sings a song, and the children then follow her to our Music Room for Opening Circle time.

Opening circle time is a time to come together as a family for greeting. All are welcome! We sing, we dance, play musical instruments, drums and love each other. The teacher then advises the children what special experiences are available for them to explore.

The children are then released to have free play for 1 uninterrupted hour. They can choose between art exploration, games, dress up, blocks, science, cooking, carpentry, sand play, bikes, climbing, sliding, gardening, balancing...

The bell rings after an hour for snack time. The children return to the classroom to wash their hands and then move to a snack table.

6 children sit at a table with a working parent to participate in a family style snack and story.

After snack the children are sent out for some more free play.

At the end of our day the children, along with the working parents and teacher, clean up the school. When the school is cleaned, the bell is rung again for carrot time.

Carrot time is where the child, whose parent brought snack for the day, sits in our honored 'carrot chair' and then gets to pass out carrots for our children to eat while a story is read.

After story time we sing our good-bye song, hug and then say our good-byes until another day!

Our afternoon class differs in that they have another circle time with their teacher where they explore pre-kindergarten readiness activities.

Half of the class has circle time and the other half has snack.

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