Who We Are
We invite you to explore & discover just what makes
Leila Day a special community.
Our Mission
Leila Day is a nonprofit child care center serving children of working families from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. We foster each child’s physical, social-emotional, intellectual, and ethical development– supporting their growing independence within a foundation of care, love, and respect. Our progressive, play-based approach is rooted in nature and enriched by our multicultural community.
Our Philosophy
Leila Day is a progressive, play-based, nature-centered school where childhood is honored. We innovate and build on the best traditions and practices of progressive, early childhood education. We believe in teaching and learning grounded in caring relationships filled with joyful learning adventures, and powered by the creativity of children at play. Teachers plan learning experiences around the needs and interests of the children and the opportunities provided by the natural world and our multicultural community. Our indoor and outdoor classrooms encourage children to explore, wonder, learn, and grow. Through these connections children reach deeper understandings about themselves, each other, and their place in the world.
Our Community
Leila Day is more than a school. We are a community of children, families, teachers, staff, administrators, and board members who come together around common values. We believe in curiosity, inquiry, empathy, kindness, and diversity. We celebrate childhood and we honor the voices of young children. We believe that truth does not reside in the consciousness of one person but in collaborative engagement and dialogue. Our community is made up of people who believe in the transformative power of progressive early childhood education, teaching, learning, and play.
Our Core Values
-
We commit to a culture of play at our school
-
We commit to honoring childhood by creating a caring, loving, safe environment where children are happy and free to explore, wonder, and grow
-
We commit to respecting our teachers as reflective practitioners
-
We commit to ethnic, racial, cultural, and socioeconomic diversity, and creating a multi-cultural community and school
-
We commit to creating a sustainable economic model to support our mission
-
We commit to supporting working families from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds
-
We commit to nourishing each child’s spirit in the natural world and using the land with love and respect
Six Core Competencies
Joyful Learning Through Play
Children learn through play and discover both the limits and the possibilities of what it means to be human. Children develop their critical thinking, creative imagination, and problem-solving abilities through free play. We honor childhood by allowing children to direct their own play as they develop different faculties, abilities, schemas, technologies, strategies and forms of agency. Through play children learn how to cooperate, collaborate, and explore the world together and alone. Through play children discover the true joy and pleasure of learning, growing and being alive.
We nurture each child’s connection, love and understanding of the natural world. Children explore their rootedness and belonging to the natural world. We mentor each child in a growing appreciation and understanding of the specific ecological relationships we have with the plants, animals and place where they live. Children become familiar with the recurrent cycles and events of the natural world and the interconnectedness of all things. We help children become good stewards and caretakers of the land and the earth.
Nature-Based Learning
Expression, Communication, & Multiple Sign Systems
Children learn how to use oral language, art, print literacy, numeracy, and multiple sign systems to express themselves, communicate with others, represent the world and use language to learn. We teach every child the skills and strategies necessary to become successful readers and writers in school. Each child develops their own unique voice and uses multiple sign systems and the "hundred languages of childhood" to participate in culture. Children move from being the recipient of other people's words to being liberated subjects who can speak for themselves.
Ethical Values & Emotional Intelligence
We support the growth of each child’s emotional intelligence (heart-mind), their ability to process difficult feelings, self-regulate their actions, and interact with others in socially constructive ways. We help children develop mindfulness and awareness of themselves, each other and the world. We cultivate the virtues of resilience, empathy for others, cooperation, generosity, gratitude, joyful appreciation of others, loving-kindness, courage, compassion, and peace.
Happy, Healthy, Bodily Sense of Self
Children cultivate a happy, healthy, powerful, dynamic sense of their own bodily selves. Through hands-on learning, an affirmation of the senses, the development of gross and fine motor skills, crawling, walking, running, climbing, jumping, gymnastics, dancing, sports and games, children develop a sense of physical autonomy and independence. We affirm each child’s intuitive sense of what is good and harmful to their bodies. Children learn how to navigate various places, spaces and physical challenges as their bodies grow and change. They learn how to affirm their own bodies and be comfortable in their own skin.
Cultural Dignity & Multicultural Literacy
We help each child develop an appreciation of both human diversity and their own cultural dignity and worth. We want each child to be conscious of who they are and to be proud of where they come from. Children learn to be curious about other people's cultures so that they may overcome fear and question dehumanizing stereotypes. Each child develops a strong sense of social justice and human equality. We teach and celebrate multi-cultural literacies, and nurture each child’s ability to participate on equal footing, with others, in a multicultural world.
