Friends Center for Children

educate children, empower families, inspire teachers, engage community, embrace diversity, embody equity

Friends Center for Children is an early childhood education center providing year-round, full-time high-quality care for children ages 3 months to 5 years. Friends Center offers a child-centered hands-on learning experience in a safe and nurturing environment where children learn through creative play and a wide range of developmentally-appropriate activities. The Friends Center is a non-sectarian organization whose value-based curriculum is guided and enhanced by its foundations in the Quaker principles of community, equality, peace, simplicity, truth, and stewardship. As a cooperative organization, parents and teachers work together to create a diverse and supportive community. The participation of parents provides a higher adult/child ratio, enriching the classroom experience. We work closely with families to find a cooperative job that fits with parents work schedules. Friends Center seeks to bridge ethnic, racial, and economic divides by creating a diverse community of children, parents, and teachers working together to support each individual child’s growth and education. Over half of the families that attend Friends Center receive financial support through our sliding scale tuition program.

Calvin Hill Day Care Center

Calvin Hill Day Care Center and the Kitty Lustman-Findling Kindergarten aim to serve as a support for whole families, working in partnership with parents to help meet the emotional, social, physical, language and intellectual needs of their children. The Center values the diversity of culture, language, goals and values of its families and is made richer by the inclusion of our families’ many backgrounds and strengths. The Center strives to establish and maintain strong relationships between teachers and families as well as to provide opportunities for growth and development in a stimulating, nurturing learning community for adults and children.

The Calvin Hill sliding scale upholds the Center’s founding mission to provide high quality, affordable child care and early childhood education to the children of Yale and greater New Haven communities. Our Board of Directors is committed to ensuring that the community of families enrolled is economically diverse.

Elm City Montessori School

Elm City Montessori School opened in August 2014 with 70 children ages 3 through 5. It is New Haven’s first public Montessori school, and Connecticut’s only local charter school. Elm City Montessori School is a racially and economically diverse New Haven public elementary school serving PreK-3 through 8th grade, where students are guided to make decisions and work to their full potential through an educational program that follows Dr. Maria Montessori’s philosophy. Montessori education focuses on child-centered learning in multi-age classrooms, hands-on inquiry and intensive family engagement.

Please visit us at http://elmcitymontessori.org for more information.

New Haven YMCA Youth Center

The New Haven YMCA Youth Center provides a full day NAEYC accredited Preschool program for 3-5 year-olds all year. We are proud to be helping youngsters gain self-confidence and social skills while developing positive attitudes about school and learning! The Central Connecticut Coast YMCA is a charitable, not-for-profit, community service organization dedicated to putting Judeo-Christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind, and body for all. The Y strengthens the foundations of communities and families through youth development, healthy living, and social responsibility in twenty-four towns and cities in the Greater Bridgeport and New Haven areas.

Alphabet Academy & The Nest Early Learning Community

We at Alphabet Academy & The Nest are passionate about early childhood education. Our staff is committed to the high calling of introducing children to the world of learning, and we strive to foster an environment that allows our students to develop their innate sense of wonder through expression, exploration, and collaboration. We know that young children are capable of profound thoughts and actions when given the time and the right creative outlets; to that end, we seek to push the boundaries of early learning through curriculum and activities that spring from deep, rich, and meaningful inquiries and interactions.

All Our Kin

We are a national nonprofit organization that trains, supports, and sustains family child care providers. Our mission to transform the nation’s child care system results in a triple win: child care providers succeed as business owners; working parents find stable, high-quality care for their children; and children gain an educational foundation that lays the groundwork for achievement.

All Our Kin serves nearly 1,100 family child care providers, who in turn educate and care for over 6,000 children from chronically under-resourced communities in Connecticut and New York City. In addition to our direct service program, we train and advise partner organizations across the country to strengthen their engagement and practice with family child care providers.

Creating Kids at the CT Children’s Museum

Creating Kids is dedicated to serving the needs of children and their families in an urban setting. A full-time, year-round program provides families with the childcare they need.

Creating Kids uses a project-based, innovative curriculum inspired by the theory of multiple intelligences that celebrates the many ways children learn. The children spend their day with a small group in a literacy-based, stimulating environment designed for learning and loving. Above all, it is a center which supports the development of creative teachers and children.

Creating Kids is an ethnically and economically diverse community of families with children from infants to preschoolers; a majority of the families are from the city’s many neighborhoods. It is a community enriched by children with special needs. It is an approved site for the New Haven Board of Education’s School Readiness Program and the Care4Kids Child Care Assistance Program; both subsidize quality child care spaces for local families.

Creating Kids is a not-for-profit child care center established in 1994. It is licensed by the State of Connecticut, and is NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) accredited.