The Tahoma Cooperative Preschool program provides a high quality, developmentally appropriate environment for your child. Our teachers have a passion for teaching children with you. Click here to learn more about our teachers

The preschool provides a safe and nurturing environment for your child that promotes all areas of development: physical, social, emotional, and cognitive, keeping in mind the healthy growth and development of the whole child. The environment emphasizes learning through exploring and interacting with adults, other children and classroom materials. Children develop an understanding of early math, science, literacy and social studies concepts through meaningful activities in the classroom.

Teaching strategies include preparing the environment to allow children time to select many of their own activities from a variety of learning centers. Children are given opportunities to work individually or in small groups. Children are provided concrete learning activities with materials that are relevant to their own life experiences. A basis for my curriculum development comes from the new Washington State Early Learning and Development Benchmarks.

An area of focus for our children is early literacy. Research shows that children develop reading and writing skills on a continuum. At the preschool age, children are beginning to explore the world of print and language.

To develop these skills to their optimum we provide the following opportunities:

• A literacy-rich environment
• An opportunity to listen and discuss stories
• A chance to develop the understanding that print carries a message
• An opportunity to engage in reading and writing attempts
• Participation in rhyming games
• Develop awareness that letters have sounds
• Encouragement to experiment with writing and story telling
• Talking about letters by name and sound

By exploring their classroom environment and given opportunities for early literacy, your child will be building the foundations for learning to read and write.