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If you're a new parent, get ready for the fastest four years of your life.

Over that relatively short span of time, a child develops from a struggling infant to a confident, socially acclimated pre-schooler ready to take on kindergarten and the world. What happens in between is what KidWorks is all about. We view a child's development in terms of a spectrum. At one end, a child's needs are fairly primitive. Nutrition, a clean dry bum, a nice warm place to have a nap, some fun things to look at and play with. Slowly, those needs give way to more complex fundamentals. Social interaction, recognizing shapes and colors, identifying letters and numbers, creative expression, language skills. At the end, if all goes as planned, is a child fully prepared for entry to Kindergarten.

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Hey! What Happened To That Adorable Little Baby?

Age Three is a phenomenal transitional age for a child. They enter this key age as cute, (maybe a little ornery) waddling tikes. Kindergarten is light years away. Twelve months later- Oh my God!- Kindergarten's around the corner. Somehow in the span of twelve months your child seems more like a little kid and less like a little baby.They've only got a year to be ready! It's panic time....

Have you done the right thing?

Is your little child going to be able to walk into that big kindergarten class and do well?

The good news is, they'll do fine. Whether they went to KidWorks, or another quality center, or if they stayed at home with Mom or Dad, Kindergarten really is just the start of formal education. And, if you remember Kindergarten yourself, you'll recall there was quite a bit of playing, running around, snacking and napping thrown in there, too.

So, what does a quality preschool do? Well,  it makes it possible for you to earn a living and give your family financial security. Someday that little bundle of joy will be choosing a college and it would be nice to be able to afford it. For your child, it provides a nice, clean, safe, fun, nurturing and stimulating environment. As children near Kindergarten age, a quality preschool begins to build the social and intellectual skill sets necessary to make the transition to school comfortably and with confidence.

The Power Of Play ( Also known as "All that money for what?")

Every good parent at some point looks at that huge monthly outlay for child care expense and wonders if they're doing the right thing. Is it enough that their child has a nice place to spend the workday? For that kind of money and time, shouldn't they be learning something? I don't mean the stuff they get from playing with others and interacting with their environment and learning their numbers and letters, I mean really super jumbo advanced learning, like maybe being able to compose a piano sonata, or name all of the heads of state in alphabetical order, or speak fluent Japanese?  

If you’ve looked around KidWorks, it’s obvious right away that the typical trappings of a "classroom" are conspicuously absent in all but our APK rooms. Young children don't need to be confined to a desk or isolated in a boxy room in order to learn. Quite the contrary, research and our own experience, has taught us that children do much better in a space that is organic, dynamic and engaging to the senses. For us old folks, learning requires a conscious effort. It's like work. Kids don't make that switch; it's all folded into their daily experiences. As long as they're engaged, they're learning, and they really enjoy it. Our job is to keep them engaged, and progressively introduce broader and more complex concepts through a balance of formal curriculum, guided play and free play.

Does this sound like an excuse by us for not teaching your two year old how to start his own hedge fund? Maybe, but the truth is that young children learn best through a balance of guided, structured play, formal instruction, and free play.

Curriculum

Beginning with the one-year-olds, we use a professional learning curriculum by HighReach, and Mother Goose Time. These robust programs provide developmentally appropriate activities, daily lesson plans and integrated themes. However, we are not beholden to the prepared curriculums. We use them to provide a consistent series of guideposts, but we encourage our staff to step outside the prepared curriculum when a good opportunity to do so presents itself. For example, if the letter of the month is "P", and Tuesday's prepared curriculum activity is a craft project coloring in and cutting out little pizzas, we'd much rather the teacher take the kids into the kitchen to make (and eat) little pizzas.

If we and you as partners have done our jobs, the first day of Kindergarten goes like this: Your child strides into the new elementary school like she owns the place, pausing for a moment to watch with curiosity the inevitable crying child/crying parent scene in the hallway, walks directly up to her new teacher, introduces herself and asks politely where her desk is. Ready to go from Day One. Good manners, good social skills, good academic preparation. Your basic dream-kid for a Kindergarten teacher.

 

KidWorks APK (Accelerated Pre-K) vs VPK (Voluntary Pre-K)

In their last year of preschool, KidWorks kids are immersed in our Acclerated Pre K experience. What's so different about KidWorks APK program that our parents are willing to pay for it, even though VPK at other centers is discounted (or free)?

KidWorks Tioga APK Center Featured In The Gainesville Sun:

Local teachers incorporate technology into classrooms

Erica Brough/Gainesville Sun

Preschoolers at KidWorks in Town of Tioga listen watch as their teacher conducts a lesson using one of the school's new 52-inch flat screens. Children are being introduced to computers at a younger age as school's incorporate technology into the classroom.

Read the full article here

Voluntary Pre K is a state run program that provides subsidized child care to all Pre-K aged children in Florida. In order for a VPK program to meet its state mandated duty to serve all children regardless of socio-economic status, or a child's prior preschool experience, they have to keep the curriculum at a level  where nobody gets left behind, and they need to do it all in the state-alloted three hours a day. In a VPK program you'll have kids who've had three years of preschool mixed in with kids who have never been in preschool at all. VPK is better than nothing, but it's not an advanced program, and it's only as good as the center administering it.

The curriculum we use for our three year olds easily exceeds VPK's standard for four year olds. The students in our APK program skip the typical four year old curriculum entirely. They get a full blown Kindergarten program. For KidWorks graduates, the first year of elementary school is literally a refresher course.

 

The KidWorks Story: We Built It For Our Kids. You'll Love it For Yours.

We are a local Gainesville family, and KidWorks is our family business. Back In 1996, our eldest son was four and his younger brother was two. We wanted a "dream" preschool for them. Cathy, the school's director, held a degree in elementary education and intended to return to teaching. She spent weeks touring area preschools. No "dream" centers. Plenty of nightmare ones. .

In a moment of questionable sanity we asked why we couldn't create our own dream preschool. We couldn't think of a good reason. (We can think of a few now, but that's a different story) The result was KidWorks, considered by the Gainesville community to be among the very finest preschools in the region.

We opened our first center in 1997. A "dream" preschool? It's as close as we can come, and we get better at it every day. In 2000, KidWorks became the first preschool to offer live internet webcams in the classrooms.  In 2005 the KidWorks family doubled with the addition of our second school, located in Tioga Town Center. KidWorks at Tioga is a great example of a high-concept design collaboration between a really good preschool program and a first-rate developer. In 2009, we completed construction of a new high tech facility exclusively for our APK Program. In 2010, our Millhopper school's APK room received a complete remodel and technology upgrade.

As working owners, we run our own schools, every day (which is why there aren't more KidWorks). Having working owners on site can mean the difference between a good preschool and a great one.

Technology To Keep Parents Connected

KidWorks was born in the digital age, in 1997, just as the internet was ramping up. Looking back, if we'd taken the money we used to open the schools and just bought some Apple stock instead, we'd be millionaires by now, just like Forrest Gump. But I digress. From the start, we've always used technology to keep our parents more connected to their children, because even a little uncertainty about your child's welfare is the worst stress you can endure. You simply cannot give your best at work if you're not completely confident about how your child is doing. We were the first (and only) preschool in Florida to issue digital pagers (remember those?) to every family at the center. Throughout the day, we broadcast little class-specific text messages about where the children were in the school and what they were up to. Parents were hooked. But we were replacing a half dozen lost pagers every month at $50 a pop. So...

In 2000, we became the first (and only) preschool in Gainesville to install live internet webcams.  Parents and out of town family members were now able to log on anywhere and check in on their little ones. As the camera technology and internet speeds have increased, we've upgraded the cam systems to take advantage, with bigger, clearer images and faster refresh speeds.

And of course you can keep caught up the old fashioned way, by just giving us a call or stopping by. We're never too busy to stop what we're doing to go check on your child for you.

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KidWorks Millhopper and Kidworks Tioga's (shown) password protected Cam Systems takes high quality still images every 30 seconds, viewable with any internet browser.

Who Is KidWorks For?

KidWorks is centered around the concept of providing an outstanding preschool experience to children of families with working parents. To that end we are open more days each year and for longer hours each day than other centers which may exist more to provide part-time enrichment programs to families who don't necessarily require full time care. As a result, we don't offer part-time or part-day programs. We recommend several of the area's church-affiliated centers, or Montessori schools to families looking for part time programs.

About Our Waitlist

We don't maintain a chronological waitlist. Instead, we have a waiting pool of families who have expressed interest. When a space becomes available, we go to the waitlist for a  new child who will best fit the mix of the existing class. For example, we'll want a child of roughly the same age, since we keep the children grouped according to when they'll enter Kindergarten. 

Next, we look at the waiting families to find children that are the best fit for the class. Amongst the eligible families, we give preference to those referred by existing clients. We will keep you on file unless and until a space becomes available for you. However, once a space has been offered to you and it is declined, we'll remove you from further consideration.

Please note that we do not accept waitlist entries by telephone. Prior to being placed on the waitlist, please schedule and complete a tour. If possible, both parents should attend.  After your tour, if you would like to be added to the school's waitlist we can do so at that time. KidWorks will never charge you a fee to be on our waitlist,

Need to know more?

Make an appointment and tour the school most convenient to you. Call us at 352 335-1335 (Northwest)  or 352 331-3833 (Tioga). We'd love to show you around and introduce you to the best preschool teaching teams in Gainesville.

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