My Teaching Philosophy

Our home has devoted three rooms, most of our storage and the yard exclusively to the school. Learning tools include lots of dramatic and visual arts, steamm, sensory, music and gross motor activities. Table top activities include manipulatives, art and sensory bins. Dramatic play includes rotating themes and loose parts. Reading, writing and art are self-service and music and movement are integral.  

 Remo hand drums, Ukulele Sprouts Curriculum, and Boomwhakers  are woven into trauma-informed and evidence-based SEL (Social Emotional Learning). A space for calming down with intentional tools is foundational to our days, so that children form safe attachment with me as a caregiver and learn methods  of coregulation and self-help  that empower  their  brains to function optimally.  As mentioned, there is also occupational therapy inspired sensory and gross  motor work with gym mats, a Jungle Jumperoo, crash pad and sensory swing. 

 This "play room" is really special and is a large sunlit space with new carpet, windows on three sides and views of tree tops and meandering squirrels on the fence. As light and dark have such a strong influence on young children's rhythms, I make every effort to keep us outdoors when we can be and in a well daylit and natural environment if the temperature is below  20 degrees or our babies are napping.  That being said naps are in an adjacent main level bedroom with room darkening curtains that  work really well and a Dohm noisemaker.

We have a fenced in front and backyard with an oversized sandbox, mud-kitchen, bikes, scooters, cars, tree stumps, sticks, overturned landscaping pavers, compost bins, wheelbarrows, 40 gallon bins, worms, roly-polys, hummingbirds, aforementioned squirrels,  bunnies, yard-tools, easels, ladders, step bridge, wildlife feeders, sensory bins, fairy gardens, vegetable gardens,  baby cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, sunflowers, firepit, sports balls, sprinklers, native plants, pollinator friends and all the big gross motor things we kept inside during the winter.  I keep trying to overgrow a playhouse we have covered in chicken wire with edible vines (scarlet runner beans and spinach malabar) but fail.   If it works this year, it will be the reading nook.  

We are 10-20 minutes walk to five parks and enjoy going to the library, soccer fields, theater in the park and stone skipping beach in the summer.