At Union Cong Nursery School, children interact in a rich, nurturing environment designed to stimulate their curiosity about the world and to encourage learning through exploration and play. Within each class, the daily schedule and the classroom environment gives the children opportunities to express their interests and build confidence in their natural abilities and intelligence. The inspiration for our curriculum comes from the Reggio-Emilia approach and New Jersey state standards for preschool.
The Reggio Emilia Approach is an innovative, inspiring philosophy on early childhood education that values the child as strong, capable, and resilient. At the center of this philosophy is the belief that every child brings with them deep curiosity and potential, and this innate curiosity drives their interest to understand their world and his/her role within it.
This approach originated over 50 years ago in the town of Reggio Emilia, Italy, where the community wanted to provide an environment that would create healthy, capable, intelligent, and engaged citizens. The Reggio Emilia Approach is now one of the leading international educational models. Union Cong has been at the forefront of this movement in the United States since the early 1990s.
The strength of our curriculum is evident in the ways that children at Union Cong can listen to each other’s ideas and express their own, to look for details in the natural world, and to express themselves in many creative ways.