Crème de la Crème’s cooking program is a student favorite. It’s a fun, safe way to expose young children to valuable kitchen skills while helping them build good nutritional habits. During cooking classes, children are exposed to basic food preparation skills, kitchen safety rules, budgeting, grocery shopping, and problem-solving. While they pour, chop, knead, and stir, they’re improving fine motor skills, practicing basic math concepts, and growing their vocabularies.

Beyond its educational value, cooking is an important nutritional tool. By giving children a chance to explore different fruits, vegetables, grains, and liquids, our cooking classes provide them with positive food-related experiences. This can often sway children to make healthier food choices and help with picky eating behaviors.

We know that trying new foods is sometimes overwhelming to young children, so we make sure they have multiple opportunities to venture beyond their sense of taste during cooking class. For example, kneading dough involves the sense of touch and helps children become comfortable with different textures. Experimenting with spices gives them a chance to explore different food smells without feeling pressured to eat. This relieves some of the anxiety associated with tasting new foods, making them more likely to try them.

We incorporate coding and robotics into the curriculum to help children develop logical thinking skills. Through a variety of hands-on activities, computer software, and fun apps, your child will learn patterns, sequencing, and spatial awareness.

Teaching young children coding basics helps them learn to problem-solve and think critically. They’ll improve their mathematical abilities, expand their communication skills, and experiment with new ideas. By including coding and robotics in the curriculum, we strive to give children a better understanding of the devices they interact with while helping them gain a strong mathematical foundation that will prepare them to think like computer programmers one day.

Crème de la Crème’s PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Skills) program focuses on character education and teaches children to understand, identify, and process their feelings in positive ways. By promoting self-control, problem-solving, and emotional awareness, children will learn friendship skills and how their behavior affects others.

Supplying children with a solid foundation in character education gives them the social and emotional skills they’ll need to achieve success in elementary school and beyond. Not only does it improve the way they communicate, but it also helps them learn to take responsibility for their own actions while teaching them about the importance of community.

Our baby sign language program gives infants and toddlers a way to communicate their wants and needs before they can verbalize them. Teachers introduce the signs for eat, drink, more, all done, and help, as well as others. This reduces stress, encourages speech development, and eases frustration.

While it’s never too early to teach signs, most babies start to remember them around six months of age and will begin to use them around the time they turn eight months old. When children learn English and American Sign Language at the same time, they use both sides of their brains to process language, giving them two places to recall language from instead of one, which may aid in speech development. Furthermore, research suggests learning sign language at an early age may help children develop reading skills more readily when they get older.

Crème de la Crème utilizes Frog Street, a comprehensive, research-based curriculum developed for early learners. This thematic-based course of study is easy to use for both our teachers and students. By focusing instruction on crucial areas of development, Frog Street prepares pre-school students to meet the demands of elementary school one day. It brings a joyful approach to learning that aims to involve all learners.

Engaging, age-appropriate assessments are an important part of Frog Street’s curriculum. Our teachers use these assessments to track student understanding and communicate important milestones to parents. Based on state and local standards, assessments are an important tool that allows parents and teachers to work together to support children’s growth and development.

Journeys is our comprehensive, science-based kindergarten curriculum. This instructional system makes it easy for teachers to provide engaging, fun experiences that build young learners’ confidence and get them excited about reading. Through the Journeys curriculum, kindergartners will receive a strong reading foundation that will build their vocabulary, teach them age-appropriate spelling and grammar rules, develop their writing abilities, and improve their listening and speaking skills.

Exposure to both literature (fiction) and informational text (non-fiction) creates well-rounded readers, and the Journey curriculum incorporates both. It allows teachers to create flexible, individualized lessons that meet the needs of all the children in their classrooms.

Outdoor playtime is essential to children’s growth and development, and our outdoor facilities reflect this. Outdoor amenities vary by location, but you can expect facilities to provide features such as baseball diamonds, age-appropriate play structures, soccer fields, splash parks, and tennis and basketball courts. By providing a diverse collection of outdoor equipment, our childcare facilities accommodate a range of developmental stages and individual interests.

Outdoor play comes with a host of benefits, including creating opportunities for social interaction, promoting physical health, giving children opportunities to take age-appropriate risks, and providing new settings for learning, to name a few. With this range of benefits in mind, Crème de la Crème teachers aim to give children two hours of active playtime daily.

Here at Crème de la Crème, we strive to provide an exceptional curriculum and a variety of experiences to give your child a head start on the path to lifelong learning. Would you like to learn more about our curriculum or our childcare programs in general? Give us a call or stop by soon. We look forward to answering your questions and showing you what makes our facilities exceptional.