Our Philosophy
The preschool years are one of the greatest times of discovery, learning and exploration. Children are discovering their feelings, learning life-long social skills and expanding their intellectual horizons by leaps and bounds. The Northville Cooperative Preschool provides a safe and supportive environment where your child can develop in all these ways.
We believe that in order to build a strong sense of community within our school, we must begin with each child as an individual. The more children learn about themselves and their abilities, the more confident they will be about themselves and with interacting and contributing to a group.
The main way we promote this self-confidence and self-esteem is by giving children a lot of individual attention on a daily basis. Our low student-to-teacher ratios, (6/7:1) for the younger classes and (7/8:1) for the older classes, allow us to meet individual interests, abilities and learning styles.
Each class also requires that parents periodically volunteer in the classroom throughout the school year, providing an opportunity to support the teacher and be actively involved in their child's learning.
One other key element of our curriculum is to give children ample time to engage in child-directed play and discovery. We give the children a lot of hands-on materials and experiences that they can explore with each day. Choice time is one key component of the daily schedule.
Play is one of the first steps in the process of learning. We view play as a gift that all children innately possess. We are here to nurture that gift and to take part in it whenever we can.
At NCP, we learn through playing, painting, drawing, building, dancing, singing, telling stories, exploring and just being together as a community of friends and life-long learners.
