Many children have come to us as infants and stayed until they were ready for kindergarten.
In their formative years our primary focus has always been on children’s social and emotional growth: helping them gradually learn to relate to others – to feel and show empathy and concern, express their feelings, relate to adults other than their parents, follow directions.

We see them grow from the natural self-centered state of the infant and toddler into small people who can cooperate, collaborate and treat others as they would like to be treated, ready to function in social situations, such as school.

Cognitive development – things like learning words, numbers, colors, shapes– is a secondary but still important focus.

We believe in the importance of play, not only for the benefits of physical exercise, but because that’s how children learn best.
So while they regularly work on activities like drawing, coloring and other art projects, we don’t sit them down to fill in pages of workbooks, or use computers. That’s for when they’re older.

We feel that preschool years are for the discoveries that grow out of playing and interacting with others.

We have an “open door” policy. Parents are welcome to visit at any time and to talk to their child’s teachers. Commonly parents do that in the mornings when the children are dropped off. During the year we schedule two individual parent-teacher conferences in which parents and teachers can compare notes on how their child is doing, and talk about specific needs or concerns, or for parents just to better know the people who are caring for their kids.

We don’t do a lot of advertising. Most parents searching for child care find Learn and Grow through word-of-mouth–in other words, from parents of children who have been enrolled in our center and have been happy to recommend us.