Welcome to CLC
At Children’s Learning Center, we honor the imaginative spark within each child, and celebrate learning through play, the arts, and hands-on exploration. We nurture children’s curiosity, creativity, and fascination with the natural world.
Together, our teachers and students cultivate caring classrooms where we explore our tapestry of rich traditions, languages, and perspectives. Our school works to encourage confidence, resilience, and a life-long love of learning.
Our families come to us from all over the world, and we are committed to growing the next generation of caring, compassionate, ethical people.
Social-Emotional Learning
Our school is devoted to the social and emotional well-being of children, and we believe that all learning takes place upon a solid foundation of trust, relatedness, and the ability to communicate about feelings. Children’s mastery of language is fueled by the desire to understand and be understood by others, and in our play-based program children’s language, negotiation, and collaboration skills thrive. These are skills for life and essential for kindergarten readiness.
Educational Philosophy & Curriculum
CLC is proud to be a play- and project-based progressive school with a long history of honoring children’s interests and passions through emergent curriculum and materials-based explorations. Each day, we fill our classrooms with beautiful, strange, provocative materials, which inspire children to engage and make their own meaning with friends. We foster the skill of noticing, which lays the foundation for a life long love of learning. We believe that every child has ideas, desires, and feelings that matter and deserve respect, from the youngest age.
At CLC, curriculum grows and takes form in response to children’s interests, teachers’ passions, and the school and world environment. Teachers begin the school year with a “curriculum spark,” question, or material they wish to explore, and then watch and listen to the children’s play to detect themes of interest that can be developed into a curriculum. In the past, curricula have included anything from Ice to Night to Ghosts, Quilting, and Recycling. These kinds of materials-rich curricula begin in our infant-toddler classroom, and are designed to support growth across learning domains, including language development, gross and fine motor, science and math learning, artistic expression, literacy, and social-emotional learning.
We believe in a child’s right to explore, inquire, and learn in their own way, and believe it is every school’s job to celebrate and support many different styles of learning. CLC employs an inclusive educational model, welcoming therapeutic service providers into our classrooms, and helping families identify and support needs in conjunction with the New York State Department of Education.
Learn more about clc
Find answers to common questions about our program, and how we do what we do.
submit an application
Learn about our admissions process, our tuition, and financial aid information.
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