Nursery School Curriculum

St. Patrick's Nursery School in Washington DC offers a comprehensive play based learning approach for children aged 3 - 4 years.

Nursery Class - Age 3 years
Pre-Kindergarten (PK) - Age 4 years

Our curriculum meets each child where they are, fitting the curriculum to the child, rather than the child to the curriculum. Our Nursery School is a welcoming and dynamic learning environment designed to nurture each child's inherent sense of wonder and desire to learn.

Cognitive Development

Throughout the day in the Nursery School, children develop cognitive, including executive function, skills by exploring, experimenting, and questioning. Both planned and spontaneous activities serve as stimuli for learning. Integrated within these activities are opportunities to expand logical thinking, acquire factual information, process increasingly complex directions, and build foundational skills in important disciplines.

Fine- and Gross-Motor Physical Development

Experience and research tell us that there is a direct relationship between a child’s motor development and cognitive development. The indoor and outdoor learning environments of the Nursery School are designed to invite children to develop their fine- and gross-motor physical skills. Music classes encourage rhythmic and creative movement, while small-group, gross-motor physical education classes promote locomotor skills, basic body-control, bi-lateral movement, and ball-handling skills through non-competitive games and activities. These activities give children frequent opportunities to refine their gross-motor skills, such as running, skipping, jumping, hopping, pedaling, climbing, lifting, and balancing. In the classroom, students have many activities to choose from, and these choices—including sand and water play, painting, drawing, using scissors and small writing tools, working with modeling materials, and using a wide variety of manipulative materials—enhance fine-motor skills. As children grow in skill, their creations reflect increased control and intention.

Children develop in cognitive, social-emotional, and physical ways according to individual developmental patterns and pacing. St. Patrick’s Nursery School curriculum meets each child where s/he is, fitting the curriculum to the child rather than the child to the curriculum.

Social and Emotional Development

Beginning with a parent-teacher conference during the first week of school, teachers build a strong relationship with each child and his/her family, which sets the stage for each student’s success in the new learning environment. On the playground and in classrooms, children receive support developing independence, taking initiative, and gaining confidence in their own abilities. Teachers help students develop the skills and provide opportunities to practice respectfully and meaningfully advocating for themselves. Students learn classroom routines, rules, and how to use materials purposefully. Morning meetings provide experience in turn-taking and sharing as well as opportunities to express opinions and feelings. Teachers guide children in learning to identify and express their emotions and recognize and respect those of their friends to help resolve conflicts appropriately. Teachers encourage and create safe opportunities for children to take appropriate risks, try, make mistakes, and persist. Weekly chapel services add a spiritual dimension to the children’s evolving sense of self. Simple service activities such as gathering healthy soup ingredients for the Day School’s service program encourage responsibility and stewardship.

Nursery School Program

Nursery School, St. Patrick’s early-childhood program, comprises four self-contained classrooms, two in the Nursery program (three- to four-year-olds) and two in the PK program (four- to five-year-olds). Leading each classroom are a head teacher and an assistant teacher who work together to design an emergent, play-based curriculum. We call this curriculum “emergent” because while we have specific developmental goals the curriculum arises largely from students’ interests and classroom explorations. Teachers build lessons around and adapt activity centers to the student's curiosity as they create learning environments to meet the various cognitive, social-emotional, communication, self-help, and motor development needs of the children. All Nursery School students (Nursery and PK) leave their self-contained classroom for science, music, and gross-motor development/physical education classes and spend an hour or more each day on the Primary Grades Playground. In addition, PK students have Spanish instruction in their classrooms twice a week. The PK program is a full day, beginning at 8:20 am and dismissing at 2:40 pm Monday through Thursday. On Friday, the PK has a half day with an 11:50 am dismissal. All Nursery students attend five mornings a week. The Nursery children can extend their day by enrolling in the afternoon Lunch Bunch program, which lasts until 2:50 pm, Monday through Thursday, and features a variety of activities to continue supporting the Nursery students in all key developmental domains to enhance their ability to learn in a classroom environment.

Our Nursery School is a welcoming and dynamic learning environment designed to nurture each child’s inherent sense of wonder and desire to understand the world around them. It is a time when children begin to learn how to become productive and successful members of a community of learners who play, explore, and learn together. Nursery School students assume increasing responsibility for themselves and for their interactions with others as they continue to make sense of the environment through active exploration. Each day, children choose from centers and intentionally design activities that invite them to explore abstract concepts and concrete knowledge and skills through verbal, visual, physical, auditory, and imaginative processes. These activities help them learn and practice skills across all developmental domains and apply their executive functioning skills so they can effectively use these skills in concert with each other. Teachers design a school environment, using thematic units and investigations, to create opportunities for children to interact with each other, adults, materials, and the environment itself to promote age-appropriate skill and concept development. Consistent with the notion of an emergent curriculum, early-childhood teachers make it a priority to know their children well so they can respond to their interests, strengths, and needs and create learning experiences that are authentic and meaningful to each child. The strong working relationships our teachers develop through regular communication with parents are an important part of this process.

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