Nursery

The New York Academy Nursery program offers our young learners a rich and comprehensive curriculum and engaging learning experience. The curriculum focuses on preparing students for elementary school as well as their social and emotional growth. The current student teacher ratio is 8:1.

Focusing on the social and emotional and well as academic needs of our young learners, our pedagogy emphasizes inquiry- and project-based instruction and learning. Through project-based learning, children actively investigate their interests, discover new ideas and develop their own understanding. In keeping with our mission and values, teachers encourage and support each child’s unique style of learning, interests and talents.

Social-Emotional Learning

During our students’ Nursery experience, children learn to manage emotions and regulate their behavior. They learn to control impulses, tolerate frustration, follow behavior guidelines, cope with strong emotions and delay gratification. In our nurturing and supportive environment, teachers gently guide children and help them develop positive social skills. They learn to share, wait their turn, express empathy, show kindness and respect others.

 English Language Arts

 We believe it is important to build a foundation for literacy at an early age. Students learn to understand and use language to communicate their thoughts, ideas, needs and feelings. They develop listening skills and understand increasingly complex language. Students expand their vocabularies as they learn to name and describe characteristics of familiar people, objects and animals. They learn to respond appropriately to statements and questions, and form sentences properly in spoken language. Our teachers also help students speak clearly and pronounce words correctly.

• Read a variety of rich children’s picture books from our wide selection of excellent children’s literature.
• Learn to retell stories.
• Develop varied interests and learn to enjoy reading.
• Learn to tell simple stories about objects, events and imaginary characters. As children develop this skill, they include a logical order of events and major details in their stories.
• Learn to engage in back-and-forth exchanges and learn the social rules of communicating, such as being polite, speaking clearly and taking turns.
• Learn letter sounds and the names of the letters. If they are developmentally ready, they learn to write letters too.

Mathematics

We know how important experiencing mathematics is for brain development. During the Nursery years, students develop the foundations of basic mathematical knowledge and skills.

• Learn number concepts and spatial relationships.
• Develop an understanding of comparisons, measurement and patterns.
• Learn to count and identify beginning numbers and connect them with their quantities (1:1 correspondence).
• Learn directions related to proximity and use and respond to positional words indicating location, direction and distance.
• Learn basic shapes and describe two-and-three-dimensional shapes.
• Compare and order sets of objects according to size, length, weight, area and volume.
• Learn about measurement by using multiples of the same unit to compare differences.
• Copy, recognize and describe patterns.
• Use simple strategies to solve mathematical problems.

Science

Students learn about the characteristics of animals and plants, and the basic physical properties of objects and materials. They also learn about our environment and how to care for it. Our students learn to notice, think and realize.

Social Studies:

Students learn about themselves in terms of age, gender and physical traits. They also learn about other people, their characteristics and how they live. They learn about different types of families, and the different roles people play in families, school and the larger community in which they live.