Program

Our Preschool Mission

Our mission is to provide a welcoming and inclusive environment dedicated to individual growth, with focused attention on growing language skills in English and Spanish. Our goal is to prepare children for a lifelong journey of learning by instilling Christian values, developing positive social skills and encouraging academic success.

All Day Childcare

The current 2024-25 preschool academic year (ending with the End of Year Ceremony on May 21) marks the transition into our offering All Day Childcare. This program starts on May 27, 2025. In accordance with our State Licensing as a preschool, we serve children ages 2 ½ through 5 years old and potty trained.

Preschool hours are being expanded to accept children from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, Monday through Friday, for 51 weeks per year, with assigned Holidays. Our yearly schedule includes a one-week preschool closure in July. ALL children participate in morning Christian, bilingual preschool activities. We offer registrations for 2-day, 3-day, and 5-day students, for half-day or full-day programs. We offer these six configurations for a graduated monthly tuition fee.

The core purpose of Little Bridges Preschool remains to be a Christian, bilingual preschool. We are expanding the hours of operation to better serve families with both parents working, who require extended hours of childcare.

We provide small group size childcare; and more importantly, we are offering an established, very well respected, unique preschool experience for your child every morning.

Class Sizes

Our preschool is housed in the buildings attached to St Luke's Episcopal Church's historic chapel. The classrooms are much newer, well lit, spacious, and bright! We value our being a smaller school, with total student attendance in the range of thirty to forty children. Our student / teacher ratio runs between 7-to-1 and 10-to-1, ensuring individualized attention to your child.

Preschool Daily Schedules

The Preschool Director/Teacher establishes the children’s daily schedule during the first week of school. Although we want to remain on a schedule, periodically it is necessary to change the schedule due to the needs of the children and/or the school. Following is the 'baseline' schedule...

8:30 - 9:30 Teacher directed activity and free choice Learning Centers
9:30 - 10:00 First Circle Time
10:00 - 10:20 Snack Time
10:20 - 10:30 Quiet Reading Time
10:30 - 11:30 Outdoor Play
11:30 -12:00 Second Circle Time
12:00 Preschool Dismissal

Lunch
Outside Play (weather permitting)
Nap Time
Bathroom
Snacks
Outside Play (weather permitting)
Crafts
Closing Circle

English and Spanish

The parish priest serving St Luke's ten years ago envisioned providing a preschool level educational experience for young children including instruction in the language and culture of Anglo and Latino families. We are the grateful recipients and implementers of that vision. We interweave English and Spanish into the entire day, as we study numbers, colors, objects, and short conversations. We also share experiences of St. Patrick's Day and Cinco de Mayo, Halloween and Dia de Los Muertos, Dr Seuss's Birthday, and Día del Niño, to name a few... Children develop empathy, compassion and respect for others when they learn and experience different cultures. Here at Little Bridges, we encourage acceptance and help prepare our preschoolers to thrive in a rapidly changing world.

Chapel

Chapel is held two days a week, to ensure that 2-day, 3-day, and 5-day students all have chapel time during the week. Chapel includes The Lord's Prayer, offering prayers, a Bible story - or other story illustrating Christian values, and a fun song. On days there is not chapel, the children participate in the Lord's Prayer as part of Opening Circle time.

Two Classrooms

There are a couple of steps between the classroom areas, so we have conveniently named them the 'upper' and the 'lower' classroom. The Lower Classroom is used by the younger children, or sometimes older children who could use a 'soft start' into the dynamics of a preschool environment. The Upper Classroom is used by the older children, and provides a more accelerated focus as they prepare for their next step into Kindergarten. This classroom also provides 'pull out' time for those children transitioning next year to Kindergarten, to sharpen those interpersonal and academic skills.

Pre-K

Specific elements included for this age-group are:

Little Bridges provides a healthy environment for the preparation of your child for the larger class sizes and longer days they will experience in Kindergarten.

We believe that the smaller class sizes, individual attention, bilingual introduction, Christian foundation, and half-day school time are important benefits for you to consider when choosing a pre-K or T-K program for your child.

Schoolyear and Summertime Schedules

During the August – to – May timeframe, the Hollister community children are at school, and our Preschool daily schedule at that time of year reflects ‘school time’ for our children. They are engaged in learning social skills and academics. The academics include: colors, shapes, numbers, letters, and more…

In June and July we spend more time in outdoor activities and theme-oriented crafts. Be sure to check out our beautiful fenced in back lawn. Summertime includes ‘relaxed’ reviews of what the children have learned during the school year.

Field Trips

We hold at least two Field Trips each year. Typical destinations are: - Gizditch Farms - Swank Farms - Hollister Fire Department - County Fair on Designated School Days

Safety Drills

Safety Drills are conducted at un-announced times each month. These drills rotate through: Fire, Earthquake, and Lockdown.

Snacks

Children have snack time included in the Daily Schedule each morning at 10:15 am. We have discovered that the most successful method of providing snacks is to ask the parents to pack a snack bag for your child, so they are getting a snack they will like. We have a supply of 'back-up" snacks, in case a child forgets to bring their lunch.

A Final Comment regarding "Program"

Thank you for making it to the end of this long listing of details. But these are important details for you to know how well prepared we are to provide a very special educational experience for your child. We are committed to a relationship of partnership and open communications with our parents through:

Weekly email newsletters sharing classroom events, parties, and upcoming activities.
Two parent-teacher conferences each school year.
We ask parents to sign up to help with class parties, story time in class, and field trips.
We share updates, photos, reminders on a private FB page