Partnering with families to create positive experiences for early learners while fostering their independence in a safe and transparent environment.
Partnering with Families
We recognize that the most effective formula for early childhood development includes a strong and healthy relationship between teachers and families. As we emerge from the effects of COVID-19 we resume building those relationships by hosting in-school activities such as grandparents day, family conferences, and inviting weekly “secret readers” to read to our early learners. We use after-school events as a way to build relationships with our families in casual and fun settings. We host annual after-school activities like our Back-to-School Bash, Trunk-or-Treat, the Christmas Spectacular, and our Celebration of the Arts. These are some examples of activities that reinforce our commitment to becoming partners with our families.
Create Positive Experiences
Your experience at LaFontaine Early Learning Center begins during the admissions process. After that, you’ll have a first day of school. From there, you and your child will become fully integrated into our center. We want all of these experiences to be positive. You might experience this by something as small as being personally greeted at drop-off or your child’s positive experience may be impacted by something as significant as intentional and organized lesson plans to guide daily activities. In the end, we want positive experiences to fill your family's participation at our center.
Foster Independence
This wheel reflects stages of development in young children. It is inspired by the work of Maria Montessori. Her work informs and influences us. We work toward fostering independence in our early learners at a developmentally appropriate rate. Our goal is to foster their independence in ways that set them up for future successes at home and school.
Maintaining a Safe Environment
Our most important job is to keep your child safe: safe from harm; safe from illness; safe from from other children! We’ve written a variety of policies to ensure that we can accomplish this. Those policies address everything from disaster preparedness, biting, and cleanliness of classrooms and classroom items. Our staff trains regularly on strategies to establish a safe school environment for your child. View some of these policies in our parent handbook.
Create a Transparent Environment
We get it. You’d prefer to be with your child each day. Actually, maybe you wouldn’t! Either way, we know that parents like to be involved in the day-to-day activities of their child. We partner with Brightwheel to create a transparent environment at LaFontaine Early Learning Center. Brightwheel is an app that each of our school families download to their phone. Once an account is created, parents can sign up to receive notifications on a variety of items. You'll be able to see if and when your child napped. You'll get a report about their food for the day. Throughout the day you'll get one or two picture updates of general classroom activities. We love this app for all its functions! We think you will too.
