Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers (6 weeks – 4 years) (Hours 6:45am-6pm Monday-Friday)

Colonial offers year-round age specific curricula developed to grow with your child and help prepare him/her for a lifetime of learning and success.

Our teachers are dedicated professionals with the training, skills, and enthusiasm to create interesting learning environments that assist children in developing a love for school. Our teachers enjoy their working environment, so they stay with us providing years of experience. All teachers are required to continuously develop and update their teaching skills with ongoing professional development. Our staff is CPR and first aid certified. Our lead teachers are certified to teach infancy through preschool age children.

Teaching Strategies Creative Curriculum

The teaching strategies creative curriculum helps children become independent, self confident, inquisitive learners. The curriculum teaches them how to learn in preschool and throughout their lives. Children will learn at their own pace and in the ways that are best for them. In doing so they develop good habits and attitudes, practicing a positive sense of themselves, which will make a difference throughout their lives.

• Creative Curriculum identifies goals in all areas of development.
• Social: To help children feel comfortable in school, trust their environment, make friends, and feel they are a part of the group.
• Emotional: To help children experience pride and self-confidence, develop independence and self-control, and have a positive attitude toward life.
• Cognitive: Assists children to become confident learners by letting them try out their own ideas and experience success, and by helping them acquire learning skills such as the ability to solve problems, ask questions, and words to describe their ideas, observations, and feelings.
• Physical: Helps children increase their large and small muscle skills and feel confident about what their bodies can do.

Brightwheel

We recently started using Brightwheel, a tool for classroom management, communication, photos, videos, online bill pay, and much more. Brightwheel is the industry leader in early education, proven to save time for staff, allowing for measurably more time with students, while also delivering a much better experience for parents.

Parent communication is essential and one of the core features of Brightwheel. Our premium messaging feature is easy to use and wonderfully efficient at keeping in touch with parents throughout the day. Creating a new message is simple and can be done on the web from the messaging portal or from any room in the mobile app. All messages sent from the school will alert all parent contacts associated with the student’s profile.

QualitystarsNY

We work with QualitystarsNY. QualitystarsNY is New York State’s voluntary 5-Star early childhood Quality Rating and Improvement System. Since its inception, QualitystarsNY has focused its evidence-based practices to ensure young children in participating programs have access to excellence and, their families can trust the level of quality in the programs they choose.

QUALITYstarsNY has 75 standards of excellence that fall into four categories: Children’s Learning Environment, Family Engagement, Leadership & Management, and Staff Qualifications & Experience. Assessment, coaching, professional development, and a wide range of resources are made available to each site, to earn higher star ratings. QUALITYstarsNY operates an extensive and comprehensive data system that tracks every investment in money, time, and effort to ensure accountability and to provide a greater understanding of what it takes to generate and sustain high-quality early education for young children.

New Health and Safety Protocols

Infant Room

• Temperatures of each child and staff will be taken upon arrival. Temperature not to exceed 100.3 or child and staff will be sent home until they are fever free for 48 hours.
• Children’s hands are immediately washed upon arrival.
• Staff washes hands upon arrival.
• Parents are to drop children off at the door. Please bring a mask when doing so.
• Clean toys during nap time.
• No sensory bins until September.
• No shoes in the infant room.

• Staff wears masks when social distancing is not possible.
• Staff social distances 6 fft from other staff.
• Staff wipes down (on top of their normal cleaning routine) in the morning and in the middle of the day and at night…Doorknobs, doorbell, bathroom sinks, toilet handles, pens being used to sign in and out, telephones, light switches, sleep mates, etc…
• All child’s belongings stay in their backpacks including coats and sweatshirts.
• Parents stay six feet apart during drop off. As more children start to enroll again there will be new protocols. More information to follow.
• Children will eat lunch separated at the table as more children enroll we will break up the children for lunch.
• Small groups for centers and children rotate as to not have a lot of children in one area.

Pre School Room

The Director

Ms. Rosanna is our new director for the early childcare building. She has a degree in Business Administration and is currently in pursuit of a Bachelors degree in Child Study. She has been working for Colonial for a year and a half making vast improvements! Ms. Rosanna has four children and has been in the childcare business for over 19 years. You may see her in her spare time, participating in volunteer work with her Girl Scout troop or coaching her son’s baseball team. She does everything you can think of, from being on the PTA board for her children’s school district, to teaching religion at St. John’s church, to running a kickball and softball team for herself and friends. She is super excited for the 2020/2021 school year to begin and be able to share all the amazing things happening here at Colonial with all our wonderful families!

The Teachers

Meet Ms. Alexa our Infant Teacher:

Ms. Alexa graduated from Center Moriches in 2018. She is a junior in St. Joseph’s College studying Child Study with a minor in Spanish. Alexa has worked for Colonial for one year and has been a lead teacher for 6 months. She loves teaching the babies Spanish, sign language and movement.

Meet Taylor our Young Toddler teacher:

Miss. Taylor is currently obtaining her CDA in infant/toddler and is trained in Teaching Strategies Creative Curriculum. She has worked for Colonial for the past 3 years. She has been attending Colonial since she was 3 years old and has loved every minute! She graduated Wm Floyd HS in 2017. Miss Taylor is currently obtaining a degree in Medical Assisting from Hunter Business School. In her spare time Taylor loves being a coach for a youth competition cheerleading team in the Wm Floyd school district which she has been involved in for the past 7 years. Miss Taylor loves teaching kids whether it be on the cheer mats or in the classroom!

Meet Ms. Stefanie our Toddler Teacher:

Ms. Stefanie graduated from William Floyd High School in 2005. She preceded to go to Eastern Suffolk Boces where she received her LPN License. She has worked for colonial for 8 years and was a lead teacher for 3 years. She also has her CDA in Infant and Toddler. She is super sweet and loves to clean!

Meet Ashley our Preschool teacher:

Miss Ashley is trained in Teaching Strategies Creative Curriculum and is currently obtaining her CDA in Preschool. She graduated in 2015 from William Floyd HS in the top 100 of her class. She is certified in Phlebotomy/Amap and for the past 2 years Miss Ashley was a manager for a home that took care of adults with disabilities. In the summer she volunteers at nursing homes in our area. She is the oldest of 6 siblings and has always taken a leadership role in everything she does in life. She is super excited to teach preschool here at Colonial!

All our lead teachers at Colonial have completed 20+ hours in professional development with Teaching Strategies Creative Curriculum and are ready to implement plans for 2020/2021 school year. They are all CPR and First Aid trained.