Welcome to the Early Learning Center 

 The Early Learning Center (ELC) is a Montessori program where your child can learn and grow in a cheerful, nurturing and stimulating environment that emphasizes learning through discovery. Our curriculum focuses on the whole child. Your child will have opportunities to build social, emotional, language, self-help, motor and cognitive skills through daily lessons and interactions with staff and peers.  ELC staff is specially trained to work with young children who are deaf and/or blind in a Montessori classroom.

 The Montessori approach takes advantage of your child’s natural desire to learn, think and act independently.  In our Montessori classrooms, the children become self-motivated and self-disciplined.  They are able to work at their own pace and ability and are taught to act with care and respect for their environment and each other.  The Montessori experience nurtures a joy for learning that will prepare your child for learning for years to come.  

 ELC teachers will lead your children to ask questions, to problem solve, to explore, to investigate and to discover.  These processes all help to foster concentration and build a love of learning.  Our classrooms are learning communities made up of a mixed age group of children ages 3-4-5 who are deaf and/or blind, each of whom bring individual strengths and abilities to the classroom.

 The children in the ELC are encouraged to follow their curiosity, to be inquisitive and to think creatively as they solve problems.   They work in blocks of time that allow them the time to explore and answer the questions “what if?” and “why?”  In finding their own solutions they expand their knowledge base and personalize their learning in ways that are not possible in a traditional education model.  The ELC staff works to meet the children where they are and to educate the whole child, mind, body and spirit.

 If you have additional questions, please contact ELC staff.

 Thank you for entrusting your child to us.  

Gail Strassel, Director of Early Learning

904-827-2835 (V or Text)  904-201-4529 (VP)

strasselg@fsdbk12.org