NURSERY

Nursery classrooms at 3e are designed to provide children with security in a safe, stimulating, language-rich environment where learning is fun, useful and meaningful. Age-appropriate activities and predictable routines, based on children's interests and needs, are balanced to offer both quiet and active experiences. Currently, the child-teacher ratio is kept at 4 to 1 in the nursery so that children have plenty of effective guidance in moving toward self regulation, positive social interaction with others, language development, independence, and internal control. The older Nursery classroom will have 10 students maximum with a ratio of 5 students to 1 teacher, in accordance with NYAEC regulations. Children remain for the entire year in the classroom in which they start, offering needed continuity of care and friendships and eliminating the need for children to build trust in unfamiliar adults again and again during the year. As the children in a particular classroom gain new skills, there are accompanying changes in planned instruction and in the learning environment to help children move to new levels of development.

Classrooms in the 3e nursery are designed so that they are easily managed by children. With the very youngest children in 3e's nursery program, teachers purposefully construct a "softer," more slowly-paced environment that provides adequate space for motor activity, greater weight on sensory activities, and plenty of age-appropriate materials designed for meaningful exploration. Large group time is held to a minimum. The nature of the children's play at this age in classrooms for younger toddlers is likely to be mostly centered on materials and objects to explore, oral language development, and the building of social competence and internal control. As a result, play is naturally more isolated or with adults, although children enjoy playing alongside one another, watching one another, and copying one another.

From birth, children use their entire body to experience balance, motion, speed, coordination, strength, power and pleasure in movement. However, this is an age when locomotor and manipulative skills are still very immature. Children are becoming more fluid in their gross motor abilities, such as running, stopping, climbing, lifting, jumping, catching, tossing, and handling their body in space. They are in process of developing some of the fundamental skills that will later allow them to play games that require more complex, coordinated movements. Perceptual motor skills such as balance, spatial awareness, figure-ground perception, and time relations improve with practice but also still need practice. Because the cartilage in their hands is not yet fully developed, young children need lots of practical experiences to be able to handle objects precisely and in a coordinated manner. Small motor activities are provided that require putting objects together, taking them apart, stacking, nesting, sorting, and handling a variety of tools to refine eye-hand coordination. Fatigue and frustration in using their own bodies can be a common experience during these earliest years, and teachers at 3e offer many age-appropriate and individually-appropriate experiences to facilitate greater control and endurance.

In the classroom for older toddlers, the pace picks up a bit; however, instruction is still primarily based on individual and small group interaction. Classroom experiences continue to be carefully matched to the children's developmental and experiential levels, but the older toddler's growing skill levels allow for the introduction of more sophisticated fine motor activities and greater promotion of self care routines. More instruction is provided about how to use specific tools and techniques to produce the products they want to create; however, adults continue to respect the child's need to explore, experiment, and express their ideas freely and creatively. Independence and exploration is encouraged within the classroom by use of low shelving, child-size furniture, and materials that are easily accessible and manipulated by the children. Children, 2 through 3 years of age, become more interested in playing interactively and talking with other children. However, they also become more invested in protecting their own territory and individuality. Consequently, there is often greater need for adults to assist children in social skill building, reduction of aggressive behaviors, ways to share materials, and using language more effectively to tell adults and other children what they want.

The 3e curriculum also covers Nursery so classroom activities will touch on these curricular domains: Cognitive Development, Creative Arts (Visual and Performing), English and Mandarin Language Arts, Global and Cultural Competence, Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Knowledge, and Physical Development.