Our Multi-Age Program is for children age three to five and is located in our Edgewood building.

Multi-age

3-5 Years

6:1 Ratio

1 Parent Helper

The multi-age preschool classrooms at IPCP give children of all ages an opportunity to learn social-emotional and cognitive skills in a nonlinear way, while simultaneously developing a respect and appreciation for the similarities and differences amongst peer learners in their community. At IPCP, the multi-age model enhances our nature-based curriculum because together they work to give children a variety of opportunities to practice the same values of respect and problem solving that are essential to developing a healthy reverence for ALL living things … from ant to human to bird; therefore guiding children to be well-rounded lifelong citizens of their community.

The Creative Curriculum model blends well with a multi-age classroom because it highlights teaching the individual child based on their strengths and challenges, instead of merely teaching to one age group using a set of developmental milestones. Through weekly informal and formal observations of children, teachers discover what makes each child special and how to challenge them in the indoor and outdoor classroom. This information is used to effectively plan formal and informal activities for the individuals and the community.

In essence, the multi-age classroom model is also an active piece of IPCP’s curriculum, all of which promote an overarching goal to support and facilitate a love for learning that starts in early childhood and inevitably lasts a lifetime.

We offer an array of opportunities for children to learn from their peers through project collaboration, imaginative play and peer modeling. Learning and play go hand-in-hand at IPCP.

The Edgewood classroom provides multiple areas to enhance learning and exploration, including spaces for building, creating art, reading, writing, socio-dramatic play, music and science experiments.

In addition, the Edgewood building has an enclosed, open-air playground with lots of opportunities for sensory exploration. These students also spend time every day in our Outdoor Classroom, which is also a certified National Wildlife Federation Wildlife Habitat—also known as “The Big O.C.” Here, children are able to observe the outdoor environment through play by building and nurturing a vegetable garden, jumping from a stump jump, balancing on a balance beam, digging in a mud pit, playing in a willow house and simply running around our flowers and trees. The Creative Curriculum and our nature-based curriculum combine well and create natural blending of the indoor and outdoor classrooms. We use nature as a window into exploring math, natural history, social studies, music and science.