Programs at C5

C5 provides the Music Together program once a week in our San Francisco early childhood education classrooms for every learning group. C5 teachers have been trained by Music Together from Princeton, New Jersey. The program is included as part of regular tuition, and families receive Music Together song books and download codes for the comprehensive music collection that the children experience throughout the school year. Parents and family members are invited to join the weekly sessions. Simply, check with your child’s teaching team for days and times.

This is an all-summer activity where families collect things in a book and/or a box that happen over the summer, and they decorate them and bring them into the school at the beginning of a new school year to share with their child’s learning group. Each family signs up for a 15 minute presentation. They are usually conducted in September-October. The children keep the books and boxes in the classroom and refer to them for months.

This activity is very similar to the Summer Book & Box activity. The presentations by each family are about their current family culture, different cultural origins and influences, and/or heritage. It is usually held in late January and early February.

We attempt to recruit a different person to come each month on two afternoons, about two weeks apart, to engage children and staff members at our San Francisco early childhood education centers. These “artists” are often friends of C5, parents, extended family members, and staff members. They have also been special volunteers from our host buildings and the surrounding community. They have been musicians, dancers, crafts people, singers, story tellers, poets, florists, computer graphic artists, and others.

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music sends two of their advanced students to C5 during select months of their school year to perform for children at both centers.

C5 has developed with professional dancers this special program to introduce children to the language of movement and dance and help them to develop competency by engaging in joyful individual, partner, and group activities that are extensions of their personal interests, explorations, and projects.

At the discretion of each teaching team in each classroom, there can be an Afternoon Program that includes themes, processes, and materials that appeal to the children and allow for their emergent interests to continue to shape their experiences within the program. The general guiding themes can change, although they tend to be scheduled on the same day of the week each week to offer consistency for the children.

Each year in the spring, C5 plans and hosts an all-month celebration of our enrolled children and their work. There are demonstrations of children and their teachers working in public venues. There is a special website that exhibits the children’s work from every age group, from infants to Prekindergarten. There is a Saturday seminar for parents, early childhood education professionals, and the public to discuss the work of young children and their powerful potential. There is a culminating gala evening of fun, food, films, games, a raffle, music, and dancing.

Each year in July, we have three weeks of Costume Days. It begins with the children and their families preparing for two weeks and making costumes and props that match each child’s interest or fascination. The teachers help when the child is in school. After that, in the third week, during Costume Week, the children finish the costumes, wear them, use them in dramatic play and scripted stories, plays and musicals, and films that they write and produce. On Friday of that week, there is a C5 community-wide evening Costume Party Potluck, where everyone, including teachers, parents, siblings, grandparents, and others wear costumes and eat, sing, play instruments, dance, and socialize at one of our San Francisco early childhood education centers.

Occasionally, teachers and parents collaborate to create a booklet that captures and represents an in-depth inquiry and/or project on which the children are working or have completed. C5 has a collection of these booklets. We can print copies for the group in the project and encourage parents to take the booklet home to keep and read with their child to extend and emphasize the learning.

Two of our teachers who went to Reggio Emilia on the 2007 study tour came back and established a more formal recycle and reuse materials area for our California State Building Center. One of them took the lead and redesigned the front half of the back store room and designated it the ReCreate room. Children can go to the room with their teachers to select materials for projects they want to create. Parents, family members, and friends of C5 donate reusable materials of all sorts for the room. The room is like a store where children can shop for free, while supporting the environment. Our other centers now also have ReCreate Rooms.

C5 has sent over a dozen staff members to Reggio Emilia, Italy over a seven year period as part of a U.S. Delegation Study Tour. Each delegation attended a one week conference and local tours of the world famous pre-primary schools in Reggio Emilia to enhance our skills and understanding of their approach, which is one of several fundamental curriculum and program influences at C5 Children’s School.

Once each year in the fall, usually in early September, C5 has a picnic, with potluck food, Music Together songs, instruments for children, and a wide range of things for currently enrolled children and alumni families to do. A popular venue has been the Julius Kahn Playground in the Presidio. We go there again in May as part of our annual Festival of Learning. Both picnics usually involve play on the exceptionally wonderful park equipment, our own kite flying, bubble making, soccer obstacle course, flower crown making, treasure hunt, very nutritious organic food, sing-alongs, and video and picture taking.

Parents have the opportunity on select evenings during the year to leave their child at our San Francisco early childhood education centers with C5 teachers and staff while they take an evening on the town. Some parents go on a date together, some do special shopping, others visit museums or parks, some join other couples, and many find creative things to do. The children are served a meal and have special activities. Getting to wear pajamas at school is a much anticipated part of the evening. These are scheduled when demand peaks; usually about twice a year. A favorite time is in early December when uninterrupted shopping is a popular idea.