Preschool

Through hands-on learning in a Reggio Emilia-inspired environment, students become protagonists—creative, capable learners expressing limitless potential. Engaging learning experiences are created using many different “languages” (e.g., building with blocks, painting, making marks with pens, sculpting with clay, weaving, exploring light and shadow, and so on). These opportunities allow students to communicate their learning with the teachers, with each other, and with the world around them. Work in the atelier (art studio) with the atelierista (studio art teacher) is an integral part of the program.

Detailed documentation of what the children are noticing, wondering, and learning is displayed in the classroom, and the students’ voices come alive in the quotes used to narrate their learning process and the journey they are traveling together. Teachers encourage and honor students’ curiosity, cultivating a lifelong love of learning. 

Classrooms for children ages three and four are located in a building designed for our Preschool programs. The bright, nature-infused Preschool 3 (PS-3) and Preschool 4 (PS-4) rooms offer authentic and integrated learning experiences, and each one opens to an outdoor learning environment that includes a gently sloping hillside and our permaculture orchard. Children also regularly use other natural areas on our 360-acre campus for exploration and study. 

Guided by the teachings of Christian Science in all their interactions, teachers help children practice selflessness, self-reliance, and self-control. Additionally, each class is encouraged to think and talk about how they want to be together—to become a community of learners, or as founder of Principia Mary Kimball Morgan put it:

We are all working for the unfoldment of character, and it has been said that there is not enough of that in the classroom. That is our real work. An instructor must help his students to find themselves. The subject matter of the classroom is only the vehicle for the larger purpose. The vital thing is not merely intellectual progress, but it is spiritual progress. And this is the point at which Principia differs from every other school.

(Education at The Principia, p. 107)