Early Childhood Center

Group of children, ages nursery-pre-k, sit along sidewalk smiling during a lesson.

Welcome to the Early Childhood Education Center at The Rumson Country Day School!

The Early Years Program is anchored by three cornerstones, early literacy development, early numeracy exploration and play based learning. Children enter school joyfully to embark on exciting adventures each and every day. Teachers are warm and nurturing, and provide a classroom setting full of interesting challenges that help children grow socially, emotionally, physically and intellectually.

Further enrichment is provided through co-curricular classes including Yoga, Spanish, PE, and Library. Rounding out the program are opportunities to learn from our community through both internal and external field trips.

Early Childhood class and teacher gather around a table and smile for the camera.

"Children enter school joyfully to embark on exciting adventures each and every day!"

– Dr. Nancy Holodak
Head of Lower School

What do we learn?

EARLY LITERACY DEVELOPMENT

Children enter their first school experience with the foundations for language learning already in place. They’ve spent three years listening attentively to the world around them and learning how to communicate their wants and needs effectively. Receptive and expressive language skills are blooming at ages three and four, and school is the place where they begin to understand the structures and conventions that language contains.

Our Nursery program is full of rich linguistic experiences with literature, art and play providing the context for learning that is exciting and purposeful. In Pre-K, students dive more deeply into an exploration of letters and phonemes to provide pathways and development of early reading and writing skills.

Giving our students the key to unlock the treasure of language ensures they will find themselves in stories of the world around them as well as tell their own stories with great expression and joy. These early experiences with language set the stage for success throughout Lower School where they fully develop their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills.

Early Childhood boy student practices writing the letter %22B%22.

EARLY NUMERACY DEVELOPMENT

When young children enter classrooms, they come with a wealth of understanding about the world through a mathematical lens. Their experiences with space, attributes, patterns, sorting and counting have helped them order and make sense of their world.

In Nursery and Pre-K, RCDS builds upon these foundational skills and strengthens conceptual understanding through learning engagements with fun and compelling materials and manipulatives.

Attaching a number to quantity, conservation of number and creating their own patterns sets the stage for formal number equations and operations, geometrical concepts and algebraic thinking. It feels and looks like play, and it’s fun, but the learning is invaluable.

Group of Early Childhood students sit at a round table using a box of writing utensils to practice their letters.

LEARNING THROUGH PLAY

Many years ago, Mr. Rogers said, “Play IS the work of childhood,” and that absolutely remains true today. Although some are anxious that children begin formal schooling to get ahead of the curve, we cannot skip the step of learning how to play, because it is crucial to the healthy development of executive functioning skills and self-regulation. These skills are essential to the ultimate success of our children in school and in life.

At RCDS our children have a variety of opportunities to play throughout their day, and it is the cornerstone of all we do.

Most children entering school at this age engage in parallel play or independent play. This means they can play near others, but are the drivers of their own play experiences. In Nursery and Pre-K, we support the developmentally appropriate shift to collaborative play.

The demands of this type of play are high. You must listen to other’s ideas, communicate your own ideas, integrate those ideas together, and sometimes build consensus to ensure play can successfully continue. We provide both structured and unstructured play experiences for our students because they serve different needs.

Tools of the Mind
Through the use of the Tools of the Mind Program, we take a thematic approach to imaginative play.

Children are initially introduced to a different play area within a theme, such as community, camping or restaurant. Students are then asked to make a commitment to taking on a role within that area, with other friends, and sustain their play through interacting with each other and the materials. Both language arts and mathematics skills are embedded into these play experiences to ensure an integrated and holistic learning engagement throughout the day.

As children’s skills grow, they begin to not just declare their intentions, but they create play plans where they draw and write down their intentions in each thematic area. This context, where they are communicating for a specific purpose, drives their innate desire to experiment and successfully express themselves with the written word. The joy and fun are invaluable to the learning experience.

In closing, children must also have opportunities to choose their own play as well. And providing these times for unstructured, child-driven play allows each student to be fully in charge of themselves and their experiences. It’s something that is hard to provide your child at home with because we don’t just “go outside and play” anymore. If you have a chance, come over to our playground to visit, and you’ll see exactly what we mean.

Early Childhood class plays with colorful scarves while learning about music.

Early Childhood boy student plays with a magnifying glass to explore his classroom.

Early Childhood student smiles while getting pulled in a wagon by her classmate.