St. Michaels Episcopal Day School. A Reggio-Emilia Inspired Preschool Based in Austin, TX
At St. Michael's Day School, we create dynamic classroom environments that inspire young minds and encourage exploration. Our thoughtfully curated materials nurture a love for learning, while each space sparks curiosity and creativity. Students engage in diverse activities promoting cognitive, emotional, and physical growth. Our classrooms offer resources for emergent curriculum and hands-on learning, including literacy materials, dynamic play centers, and tools for science, math, and art exploration. We value each child's uniqueness, crafting adaptable environments that cater to individual interests. Our goal is to make learning come alive, fostering wonder and curiosity in a lifelong journey of discovery.
Caring for our youngest children is all about relationships. Our caregivers work to build safe, secure attachments that allow the young toddlers to explore freely. Children are supported through their developmental milestones with ample floor and tummy time, individualized caretaking routines, and opportunities for exploring their environments.
Toddlers spend their time investigating their surroundings using all of their senses, which is why we provide a rich sensory environment filled with intriguing materials for exploration, along with engaging artistic and scientific experiences that ignite children’s curiosity and wonder. Songs, music, fingerplays, and movement are all incorporated into the children’s days, leading the way to expansive language and mobility development.
We strive to promote our 2-year-old's thirst for independence by offering plenty of time and space to test out their abilities. We find our natural playground to be just the right place for children to take those calculated risks and show off all their skills and strength with things like climbing and jumping! 2-year-olds tend to feel very big emotions, often with their whole bodies. We work to respond to children’s emotions with understanding and empathy, using regulation strategies that help children to build coping skills and discover the power they have in handling difficult things.
The inquisitive nature of 3-year-olds makes them some of the greatest scientific thinkers out there! We encourage the children to not only ask those big questions, but also to seek out the answers for themselves. 3-year-olds are also becoming more social, preferring to play with other children and finding joy in the stories they tell and the games they play. These relationships blossom as the children explore their shared interests and build understandings of what it means to be a friend.
PreK is an exciting year for our 4-year-olds! The year is focused on ensuring the children leave our school with all of the skills they need to thrive in their next chapter. 4-year-olds are natural storytellers. They enjoy making up stories, acting out familiar ones in a dramatic play setting, and hearing favorite stories over and over again. We use this interest as a pathway to those early literacy skills like understanding story structures, awareness of print, and emergent writing.
The Kinder Bridge class offers a gentle transition into the more mainstream education that most kindergarteners receive. Housed within an intimate class size, the children are presented with hands-on learning experiences, group research investigations, and opportunities to learn about topics that interest them. Children are immersed in a world of literacy and mathematic concepts, discovering for themselves the joy that is learning.