Our teachers function as a team to create a supportive and engaging environment in which each child feels encouraged to explore, learn and grow. Our approach covers a number of areas:

Jewish content
At Gan, students learn to think deeply about Jewish stories, values, and holiday observance, and to do it in a way that is perfectly suited to their age and stage of development.

Jewish content is integrated across the curriculum. At end of the term kids come home with a full Torah composed of sections they have made and saved over the course of the year—20 different drawings and quotes of each individual’s unique reactions to passages and stories.

In addition, every Friday, students get to participate in an interactive Torah show.  Performed by a teacher and his or her favorite toy animals, people and plants, students get to ask questions of the characters, experience suspenseful dramas, and laugh out loud as teachers use their imaginations to bring Torah stories to life.

Art
More than at any other time in life, kids can be fearless experimenters. This is a trait that the Gan embraces and fosters through any number of methods of self-expression.

Over his or her two years at Gan Shalom, your child will gains exposure to a wide variety of artistic mediums: acrylic paints, water colors, collage, sculpture, beading,  paper cutting, sparkles and sprinkles, culinary creations, and more.

Artistic projects often draw on Jewish themes, enabling students to integrate their analytic skills into their highly imaginative artistic creations.

Music
Gan Shalom takes music seriously.  With a professional cantor, a professional children’s musician, and several accomplished instrumentalists in our parent community, students gain exposure to a wide variety of instruments and musical styles during their Gan careers.  The songs of Gan will fill your home and your heart.

Dance
Twice a week, students get to attend Teacher Risa’s Jelly Jam, an imaginative dance and movement class designed just for preschoolers.  Risa’s extraordinary background includes a year in Paris studying movement and circus arts, and her creativity and warmth are contagious.  The class is open to all students who attend Gan Shalom at no extra charge.

Play
We see our backyard as an outdoor classroom, a place that can both encourage imaginative play as well as space for children to run and jump and climb trees – all the things that make childhood what it is.