Preschool Open House

Visit the Cooperative Nursery School on Thursday February 23, 2012 from 5 - 7 p.m. or on Friday February 24 from 9:30 - 11:30 a.m. for our 2012-2013 Enrollment Open House!  The Cooperative Nursery School was established in 1946.  Today our school is still parent owned and operated!  The parents of the children enrolled can choose to assist in the classroom about 3 mornings per month or they can choose to be non assisting.

Our class sizes are kept small to create a more intimate and focused learning environment.  Our adult to child ratio averages 1:4 which is well below NAEYC accredited standards.  Coop follows "The Creative Curriculum" which allows children to learn through play.  The curriculum, along with the outstanding adult:child ratio at Coop, helps the teacher to create and teach learning activities so that each child's individual needs are met.  The curriculum allows the children to learn at their own rate and adapts the environment to encompass all learning styles.

Our teachers are accredited and meet all of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services requirements.

So please stop in for a visit on Thursday February 23 from 5-7 p.m. or Friday February 24 from 9:30-11:30 a.m!   



Post Office fun in Preschool!

We've been studying community helpers this week.  Part of our study was visiting a local post office.
After visiting the Post Office, we decided to create our own Post Office in the classroom.  It was a huge success!  The kids had so much fun writing their "letters" and delivering them to their friends and families.  Earlier in the week we had made mail carrier bags out of brown grocery bags.  We'll keep these mailbags for our Valentine's Day celebration!

As you can see our Post Office was a busy place!  Lots of writing, sharing, and language going on!

You can see our mailbags and mail boxes in this picture.

And of course, a post office wouldn't be complete without a sign!

Happy New Year!

Making graham cracker gingerbread houses in the 4's class.

It's been a long time since I last posted! We've been very busy at Coop! We held another successful winter concert right before break. The children worked very hard to learn their songs and they performed beautifully!

The two year old classes went on a field trip to a local post office. They had a great time learning about how a post office works. The three year olds and four year olds will be visiting the post office in January!

Enrollment and open house information for the 2012-2013 school year will be posted soon!

Human size spider web in preschool

Every year when we study spiders in the 4's classroom we build a human size spider web.  The kids love to build it, they need very little direction, and then they spend the morning playing in the web.  It's a great experience for them and fun too!

Fire Safety

It's so important to discuss fire safety with your children.  Have an evacuation plan for your home.  Make sure your plan includes an outside meeting place.  Emphasize to your children, not to hide if a fire happens in your home.  They need to make noise so that the firefighters can find them.  Be sure that your evacuation plan includes an outdoor meeting place and that no one should ever go back into a burning building for any reason.  Preschools in our area are required to do monthly fire drills.  Practice, practice, practice!

The First Day of Preschool is upon us!

The first day of school is right around the corner!  There are exciting new changes to our staff and curriculum at the Cooperative Nursery School!  We welcome Jenelle Keene as our 2's teacher and Good Beginnings teacher.  Robin Newhouse is joining Coop as our 3's teacher!  We will continue to offer music enrichment to each of our classes and welcome Miss Joanna as our new music teacher!  For the first time we will be offering spanish language learning to each of our classes!  Miss Azucena will be our spanish teacher!  It's going to be a great year for our students and their families!

Cooperative Nursery School Summer Update!

Summer is flying by!  It won't be long and the quiet hallways and classrooms will be filled with children's laughter once again!  I can hardly wait!  Even though the children have been gone there has been lots of things going on to prepare for the new school year.  We have two new teachers on staff for the fall.  Miss Jenelle will be teaching our Monday/Wednesday and Tuesday/Thursday 2's classes and will remain the facilitator of our Good Beginnings Parent-Child playgroup that meets on Friday mornings.  Miss Robin will be our new Monday/Wednesday/Friday 3's teacher and she will be assisting me in the 4/5's class on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.  I hope to have some new teacher bio's posted in the near future.

We are in the process of accepting applications for a music teacher.  Miss Genevieve left us to pursue her PHD at our local university.  We'll be offering spanish enrichment classes and art enrichment classes this fall too! 

It's going to be a fantastic school year!  We still have openings in our Monday/Wednesday 2's and our 3's and 4/5's classes.  Visit our website for more information http://www.coopnursery.org/ or call the school on Tuesday or Thursday mornings from 9:30-11:30 for information or to setup a site visit.