Hello! I am Catherine Hatch, of Hatch Family DaySchool & AM/PM Care. I welcome you to please check out our photo gallery in this Yelp App, as a picture states more than a thousand words of what I can describe of how we have helped families over the span of the past 20 years!
Our standard operation hours are 7:30am to 5:30pm, Monday thru Friday, however, we offer earlier AM and Late night PM, as well as weekend care with extended hours. Please feel free to explore your specialized scheduling with us, as we work to support your needs with flexible hours of operation in 24 hour availability.
Our support for families includes standard PreK dayschool with the addition of school aged AM and PM Care with transportation to and from school and after school individualized tutoring. We are open when school is Closed during the school year to accommodate families who work and need a safe learning place for their child. We offer many varied enrichment activities for children of every age, especially supporting sibling relationships.
Two healthy meals and two snacks are provided each day. Main group rest time is after lunch at approximately 1:30pm. We also help to provide your very young infant with a quiet, consistently monitored place for morning nap time, as needed.
We are trained in nutrition and safe food handling, Pediatric CPR and First Aid. All employees are background checked, immunized, tuberculosis tested, fingerprinted, FBI and Child Abuse Index Checked. All teachers have minimum requirements of Early Childhood Education training, and history of working with children before employ at our DaySchool. Hatch DaySchool has a low teacher turnover rate. All current employees have worked here for more than 3 years.
We have low teacher to student ratio of 1:6 or fewer on average, as compared to large center based preschool where ratio can be 2:20. We choose to keep our care center on a home site so as to keep overhead low, and thusly student ratio low, as well. Our relationships, then with the children, are child individual centered, rather than group oriented, with a focus on developing joy of learning in the whole child.
In DaySchool, we begin our day with cooperative play with all ages, then break up into learning groups at lesson time each day. We plan our themed program to have a circle time, sharing time, lesson time, music/song time (with fingerplay) and much outside full motor play scheduled into our day.
Our artistic projects are both creatively open ended as well as structured so as to teach artistic technique by teacher demonstration and allow the child to explore full artistic feeling of representation, pride in individual works.
The doors to the outside science of nature are opened through activities and observation on the farm, at the river, at the lake, on field trips to pumpkin patch, farmer's market and harvesting from our own garden, bushes and trees. We teach coexistence with nature's creatures, a love of our natural environment and conservation. When visiting local parks and on hikes we teach care for trails, individual safety and leave no trace.
Good manners and positive socialization are emphasized and encouraged in all interactions together, as well as kindness and empathy to develop strength of character. We recognize and attempt to develop emerging child natural leadership abilities.
There is a great deal of parent communication. We send photos during the day of prominant activities, message parents any concerns either health or otherwise and communicate both at start and end of day to ensure best care for your child.
Lesson times include introductions and review of shapes and colors, name practice, phonetic awareness, alphabet and numeric counting activities. We use many types of manipilatives, counters, pattern blocks, natural products in our instruction and prepare children to interact with their new world. We only use positive discipline, gentleness, calm, respect and a loving approach to communication and care with our peers, elders and animals.
Please feel free to contact us at (707)462-2265 and/or (707)815-2169 to schedule a tour. Tours are offered Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday (with notification) at either 11am or 4:30pm (which is recess time where a teacher is free to aid with guided tours). We do not offer tours on Wednesdays, as public school is out early and time is more of an essence to spend with the children on our activities. School aged children also enjoy "Special Wednesday Field Trip Day" that particular day each week. Thank you for considering our DaySchool!
