It is our vision that through the Hillsdale Church Child Care Ministries we will provide a safe and loving environment for children, where they will learn the good news of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and will come to understand how Biblical truth applies to their lives.  We seek to teach children Christian values and to help develop a pattern of behavior that mirrors those values.

We utilize the research-based, The Creative Curriculum to help us structure our program and reach our goals.  “The Creative Curriculum helps teachers interact with children in ways that promote development and learning, foster children’s social competence, support children’s learning through play, create rich environments for learning and forge strong home/school connections,” according to The Creative Curriculum, Research Foundations Papers by Teaching Strategies.

The Creative Curriculum addresses all important areas of learning, from technology to the arts, and incorporates them throughout every part of the day. Creative learning activities such as dramatic play, blocks, crafts, and music teach math, reading, and social/emotional skills. Classrooms are set up for exploration and learning. Children have many opportunities to make choices, experiment, and interact with others. This physical environment affects the quality of learning interactions  There are distinct areas, "centers":  blocks, dramatic play, manipulatives, art, reading, sensory, music and movement, and different outdoor play spaces so children know what choices are available and can make decisions. Centers and open-ended art activities provide opportunities for children to build positive relationships with their peers. 

For more information on The Creative Curriculum, you can visit www.TeachingStrategies.com

We use Letterland in our three and four-year-old classrooms to teach phonics. "Letterland is a unique, phonics-based approach to teaching reading, writing, and spelling. The Letterland characters transform plain black letter shapes into child-friendly pictograms and they all live in an imaginary place called Letterland. Simple stories about the Letterland characters explain the full range of dry phonics facts so that students are motivated to listen, to think, and to learn.

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Letterland was created to teach phonics using a story-based approach. The story logic engages students leading to long-term retention of concepts. What's more, Letterland is wonderfully multi-sensory. It activates every learning channel through music, actions, alliteration, movement, song, art, games, and role-play." - https://us.letterland.com/

In the four-year-old classroom, we use the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum to teach phonemic awareness. "It provides everything you need to teach daily phonemic awareness lessons in 12 minutes or less. Fast, effective and fun..." - https://heggerty.org/curriculum/

The Preschool at Hillsdale Church provides many opportunities to explore and discover because we believe children can learn through teacher-constructed, purposeful play situations. This enables children to develop confidence, creativity, and lifelong creative thinking skills. Our teachers observe children closely to understand each child’s interests, level and way of learning and find ways to tailor their lessons and classroom to increase their learning. We believe that warm and supportive teacher/child relationships encourage children’s motivation, involvement, self-direction, cooperation and positive attitudes toward school.  Our small class sizes and student/teacher ratios contribute to this relationship. We routinely conduct formal evaluations of skills and host a minimum of twice annual Parent/Teacher conferences to review each child's progress.

Hillsdale Church Child Care Ministries provides equal opportunity without regard to race, religion, sex, age or national origin.  While families are not required to be members of Hillsdale Church, participants should be aware that Hillsdale Church Child Care is a Christian ministry.  During chapel and daily lessons we will tell Bible stories and sing songs on an age-appropriate level.  We will pray daily and bless all meals.