Child's Play School

Experience Toddler Overview

Everything we do with your toddler starts with relationship. Before a child can learn, they need to feel safe, seen, and loved — that trust is the foundation every experience in our toddler classrooms is built on.

From there, our curriculum meets each child exactly where they are. Toddlers are wired to learn through play and sensory discovery, so that's how we teach: hands-on, open-ended, and endlessly curious. Every week, your child encounters at least 15 activities spanning four domains — Language & Literacy, Art & Drama, Math & Reasoning, and Music & Movement — each one intentionally designed to build one or two specific skills. Because every toddler grows at their own pace, our teachers adjust the challenge of each activity in real time, and use thoughtful questions throughout the day to help children notice, wonder, and make connections on their own.

A New Theme Every Month

Each month brings a new theme for your toddler to explore — from Family & Pets and All About Me, to Garden Treasures and Bubbles, Boats & Floats, to Space & Sky and DinoLand. Circle Time happens in short, frequent bursts throughout the day rather than one long sit-down — a rhythm that fits how toddlers actually attend and engage — and each one follows the same comforting routine of a transition song, a shared concept, and a chance to move.

Families get a window into all of it through our Family Newsletter, sent home each month with a look at what your child is exploring and simple ways to extend the learning at home.

A Featured Book Each Week

Every month, we build our classroom around four kinds of books, each one chosen to grow a different piece of your child's social-emotional and early literacy development:

  • Follow the Path books build vocabulary through photographs, and invite children to trace a path from left to right — an early, playful introduction to the direction and rhythm of text.

  • Forest Friends stories explore friendship and character through gentle, relatable tales.

  • Nursery Rhyme books sharpen listening and communication as children spot new pictures and words.

  • Storybooks spark imagination as children get to know characters and act out how they face — and solve — their problems.

Our weekly activities are built directly around that month's featured books, so the story your child falls in love with becomes the thread running through everything they do that week. During a Family & Pets month, for instance, your toddler might act out a favorite story with the whole group, sort circles by color during cleanup time, count pretend muffins "for mom," and dance out the words "happy" and "sad" — all built around the same book and the same handful of skills, revisited in a dozen playful ways.

What a Week Looks Like

Across our four learning domains, your toddler will move through a rich mix of experiences:

  • Language & Literacy: book discovery, story play, communication, pictures & letters, active listening

  • Art & Drama: sticker art, dramatic play, painting, collaging, coloring

  • Math & Reasoning: sorting & shapes, hands-on measurement, sensory play, life skills, number play

  • Music & Movement: group dance, coordination, creative movement, rhythm and pattern, sounds & signs

It's a full, joyful world of learning — one built to grow with your child, one week at a time.

Experience Preschool Overview

By the time children move into our preschool classrooms, that same foundation of trust and relationship carries forward — but the world they're exploring gets bigger. Our preschool program is built to nurture the whole child through hands-on, play-based learning rather than worksheets and rote instruction, and it's designed to meet children exactly where they are as their curiosity, independence, and sense of self all take off.

Children this age are natural investigators, and our classrooms are built around that. Each month centers on a new theme, unpacked through a web of big ideas and daily discovery topics that connect everything your child does that month — Circle Time conversations, art, music, math, and dramatic play all trace back to the same thread, so your child isn't just moving through isolated activities, they're building real, connected understanding.

A New Theme Every Month

Each morning at Circle Time, your child's teacher introduces that day's topic — one of 20 threaded through the month's larger theme. Over the course of the year, themes carry your child from the everyday to the far-flung: All About Me, Weather & Seasons, and On the Go ground the year in the familiar; DinoLand, Nature Neighborhoods, Space & Sky, and Buzz, Flutter & Fly open up bigger worlds to explore; and Health & Fitness, Garden Treasures, Science Lab, Art Studio, and Bubbles, Boats & Floats round things out with hands-on discovery. Each day opens with a Community Challenge that builds a sense of belonging through a shared song, game, or collaborative task, and an Alphabet Adventure that introduces a new letter and sound through chants, movement, and play.

Each month, families can also see the Theme Web that maps out that month's big ideas and receive a Family Newsletter with a look at what's coming up in the classroom.

Woven throughout every month is a Forest Friends story that helps children explore a specific character trait — kindness, patience, generosity, fairness, bravery, and honesty are just a few — through storytelling and play, alongside a featured storybook your child's teacher reads across multiple days to build vocabulary, comprehension, and a love of retelling a story in their own words. A rotating set of STEAM Stations — science, technology, engineering, art, and math — invites children to build, test, and ask "why" through open-ended exploration, alongside Dramatic Play and Block stations that turn each month's theme into a world children can step into and build with their own hands. We believe every child is an artist, an engineer, and a bit of a tinkering genius, and we love watching that show up on the walls of our classrooms.

To give you a sense of what that looks like in practice: during one themed month, your child might spend the morning discussing farm animals, stamping paintings with real eggs, counting figures back into a pen, and dancing to a themed album — all in service of the same handful of letters, numbers, and social skills, explored from a dozen different angles in a single day.

What a Day Looks Like

Across every day, your child moves through a rich balance of large group, small group, and independent exploration:

  • Language & Literacy: Circle Time discussion, Alphabet Adventure, storytime and storybook connections, and daily journaling and mark-making that builds toward writing

  • Math & Reasoning: counting, sorting, patterns, measurement, and spatial reasoning worked into games and hands-on manipulatives

  • Creative Arts & STEAM: open-ended art, dramatic play, and weekly science, technology, engineering, and art projects that invite children to investigate and create

  • Social-Emotional Growth: Community Challenge, Forest Friends storytelling, and daily practice with sharing, including others, and working through feelings

  • Music & Movement: rhythm, dance, and group music that build both physical confidence and a sense of togetherness

Growing Toward Kindergarten

Alongside all of that joy and play, we're quietly building the skills your child will need for what comes next — early literacy and number sense, the attention and self-regulation that long-term learning requires, and the social confidence to navigate a classroom community. We observe and document that growth throughout the year, so we can share with you a real, thoughtful picture of your child's development — not just how they're doing academically, but who they're becoming.

It's the same philosophy that's guided your child since their first days in our toddler classrooms: meet them where they are, follow their curiosity, and let real relationships be the foundation everything else is built on.

 

Preview Daily Activities in Brightwheel

We are happy to open our lesson planning books and share a preview of the activities children will be learning each day. In Brightwheel, under Learning, simply click on the date and you'll discover an overview of the daily activities and centers (if applicable). You'll find a description of the activity for infants, young and older toddlers along with the skills embedded in the activity.

 
 
 
 

Observing & Documenting Growth

Each day, teachers document their observations for one activity. For 1-2 embedded skills (e.g., Measurement), teachers document each child's demonstrated skill level along with a photo/video and a note briefly summarizing the activity. You'll find this observation in your child's daily feed.