TV’s are used no more than 20 minutes per day. They are utilized as a teaching tool or transitional tool. The only time movies are allowed are for special occasions! For example, the preschoolers may watch It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown as part of their Halloween party or the toddlers may watch a little bit of the movie Frozen during a pajama day party. It is not a common occurrence and is a special treat.

Absolutely. We are well versed in allergy control and response. Although we are not technically a peanut-free facility, we definitely limit our peanut exposure as it is a very common allergen. We are allergy-friendly including lactose, soy, gluten, nuts, and others. We work with the children to include them in owning their allergy and asking if meals contain allergens. After all – they have to live with their allergy for life, so we want them to take charge of it from an early age! We work with parents to supplement foods we are unable to accommodate for children with allergies and all staff are trained in allergy response.

As a Parent Aware rated center, we use an approved curriculum called 123Learn. We also enrich it with many resources including Pocket of Preschool, Totschooling, PK Printable Fun, Prekinders and Teaching 2 & 3 year olds. Our teachers are all very good at lesson planning. We have a year long curriculum that features a monthly overall theme with segments throughout the month to build on. For example, February’s theme is Science and Technology, and the topics to explore are transportation, weather, the water cycle, baking and cooking, light, space, time, inventing, machines, and physics. Of course, this is a lot to talk about in a month, so our teachers pick and choose to keep things interesting year to year!

We have a beautiful commercial kitchen on site. It is licensed with the state of Minnesota and we follow all food safety requirements. We take pride in the meals we serve! Not only are they delicious but they are packed with nutrition. We are big on steaming and roasting and seasoning well! We limit salt, butter and oil. We cook with only canola oil as we limit soy as well. We only offer and allow low sugar foods, including for parties and special events.

DAILY! We are huge on outdoor play, it is a necessary component of a good childhood! Our goal is for children in our center to spend 1,000 hours a year outside. It’s a huge goal that we accomplish by bringing the learning outside! We go on walks, venture to the woods, go to the lakewalk, and play in our lovely yard! We require good winter gear as the cold does not stop us from going outside. We are active and love it!

We close for select holidays throughout the year and a few scheduled teacher in-service days. They are always published in our parent handbook, on our website (on the Parent Resources page), in each classroom, and on our bulletin board in the front hall. Additionally, we send many reminders throughout the year. We may close for inclement weather, and that would be on a case-by-case basis. It is our goal to stay open and available for working families.