Paradise Valley United Methodist Church Preschool was established in 1967 with a commitment to the intellectual and spiritual enrichment of our children. As a result of the dedication of our teachers, families, and church community, we are proud to be the only preschool in Arizona to have accreditation from the NAEYC (National Academy of Early Childhood Programs) dating back to 1986. The Preschool owes this distinguished record to its philosophy of encouraging growth and self-esteem through physical, creative, emotional, social, intellectual and faith-based development. We provide a caring community to nurture this development. The Preschool also supports parental involvement to enhance the value of each child’s family experience.


Our Curriculum
Our Objectives

Our Curriculum

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The Paradise Valley United Methodist Church Preschool is committed to enhancing the self-esteem of each child and is concerned about the individual child's growth in the areas of physical, creative, emotional, social, and intellectual and faith development. The Preschool seeks to provide a nurturing environment, which supports parental involvement and enhances the value of each child's family experience.

The program progresses from the informal structure necessary for the very young child toward increasingly verbally directed experiences, alternating with periods of creative freedom as the child grows older and the attention span lengthens.

All children will participate in a variety of developmentally appropriate activities planned by the teachers to reflect the school's philosophy. Each class has two teachers, one or both of whom are degreed and/or certified.

Teachers work with the director to handle discipline in a positive and preventative manner. At the heart of our approach is a belief in the child's self-worth. We support positive reinforcement, active listening, parent involvement and redirection of inappropriate behavior that might prove harmful to the child or to his peers.

Our Objectives

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LANGUAGE ARTS: To develop expressive and receptive skills. Including but not limited to: creative dramatics, poetry, finger plays, composing group experience stories, recording individual language, group speaking, listening skills, beginning phonics and exposure to the best in children's literature.

SCIENCE: To stimulate curiosity and develop a scientific approach by observing, recording, experimenting, sorting, classifying and being responsible for live animals and plants and to explore the properties of objects with all five senses and through water play and cooking. To establish good health habits including but not limited to: nutrition, exercise and concern for and care of the environment.

SOCIAL STUDIES: To expose children to multicultural customs and historic events. To increase the child's awareness of the people who are a part of his/her world through classroom visits, visual materials and dramatic play.

ART: To provide an environment with a multitude of creative experience for each child to explore including but not limited to: painting, clay, collage, woodworking and paper crafts.

MUSIC: To make music an integral part of a child's life at school through listening experiences, singing, rhythm, and creative movement.

MATHEMATICS: To explore relationships (e.g. less, more, part, whole, few, many), one-to-one correspondence, matching shapes, proportions, and balance as well as number concepts.

PERCEPTUAL MOTOR: To enhance the child's self-perception of his/her body through movement experiences that focus on gross motor skills, spatial relationships, and balance, and coordination, unilateral, bilateral and cross-lateral movements.

For more information, please refer to our accreditation.