Transitional Kindergarten at CCS
Transitional Kindergarten at Children’s Community School offers a thoughtful and supportive entry point into our elementary program. Designed with our child-centered, inquiry-based approach, TK provides a strong foundation for kindergarten while honoring the importance of play, exploration, and social development. TK students engage with core elements of the CCS experience, building early academic skills through hands-on learning. They benefit from mixed-age connections across the campus and participate in specialist-led classes, including Library, Visual Arts, Creative Movement, Music, and P.E.
Our TK program serves children who are four years old at the time of entry. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis as space allows.
Play
Play is at the heart of our school. It builds on independence, teaches children to compromise and collaborate, and enables them to make connections between what is taught in the classroom and the real world.
Through experiences with play, our TK students will learn new skills, engage with their environment, explore identity, and navigate peer relationships. Then, they will put all those new facets to work when they are on our Middle Yard- whether playing on the treehouse, in the sandbox, or doing a block build with friends. Play is an essential part of early childhood education and it will be prioritized throughout the day as teachers help ensure that students are meaningfully involved in all the social, emotional, and cognitive pieces that comprise joyful learning.
specialists
A Well-Rounded TK Experience
To enrich and broaden their understanding of core concepts, our TK students learn directly from specialized educators in six key areas:
Library: Fostering an early love for reading and storytelling.
Visual Art: Encouraging self-expression and fine motor skills.
Creative Movement & Music: Developing rhythm, spatial awareness, and confidence.
Physical Education: Building strength, coordination, and teamwork.
At Children’s Community School, our Specialist teachers collaborate directly with classroom teachers to weave classroom themes into their art studios, music and dance rooms, library and outdoor spaces. Providing children with different access points to topics activates their young brains in innovative ways, deepening their comprehension, expanding their ownership of new concepts, and quickly helping them develop a new passion for learning that prepares them for Kindergarten and beyond.
program
Life Studies empowers teachers to nimbly respond to the interests of their students and, in turn, gives children ownership of their own learning.
The TK program at Children’s Community School provides an enriching foundation for academic readiness and social-emotional growth. Designed specifically to transition young learners to an elementary campus, our progressive approach balances extended periods of self-directed play with targeted, skill-building activities.
Students engage in cooperative, open-ended projects alongside structured, step-by-step instruction. True to the hallmark of a CCS education, every subject is taught through immersive, hands-on experiences that empower children to explore, collaborate, and thrive.
Connection
CCS’ small size ensures that our teachers know each student deeply. Each child’s progress is respected, and they are encouraged to take the next social-emotional or educational step when it is indicated.
This is an instrumental time for young children to start making connections with their peers and developing close bonds with friends. TK students have collective experiences with older students with whom they do projects, read books, and play on our yards. These relationships foster an inclusive community and are central to building bonds between ages and abilities.
Independence
In TK, students begin to foster responsibility for their belongings, themselves, their community, our campus, and the world. Their confidence blossoms when these skills are built incrementally and intentionally.
When children enter TK, their competency and ability to develop self-help skills expand. They begin to tackle challenges big and small, new and familiar, and, in doing so, learn to trust themselves and understand how their actions affect others and the world around them. As is true of all students at CCS, our youngest learners engage with the community and begin to structure their worldview on a compassionate campus.
