Outdoor Preschool for Toddlers
A full-day preschool for toddlers starting at 18 months, play-based, with a Reggio Emilia approach
Our toddlers learn to love the outdoors — rain or shine!
They also enjoy a large, covered porch to protect them from the elements, and a beautiful indoor nap and play space.
A First Big Adventure
For toddlers, this is the first big adventure away from home and away from parents.
Our focus is to establish a strong connection between school and home, and this begins with creating and sustaining a sense of trust and connection with parents.
Gaining Practical Life Skills
Our toddlers gain practical life skills through the daily rhythms in the forest. We focus on three major tenants: we take care of each other, ourselves, and the Earth.
Thus, children learn and internalize the skills needed to navigate through the forest and the greater world with ease.
To be present in the wilderness is to take care in the wilderness
The children experience the joys of having a friend and being a friend.
From learning to hike from place to place as a group, stopping to allow another child to tie their shoe or point out an interesting plant, to offering a hand to a classmate as they traverse over fallen logs, empathy and consideration are continuously promoted and instilled within our students.
The Littlest Birds at CBI
The Littlest Birds at CBI
What Parents Say —
“The youngest kids are taught ‘we take care of our things and ourselves’.”
— Carolyn Leasure, Parent
It represents one of our most important values, Tikkun Olam (repairing our world), which is woven throughout Forest School.
It has very practical, real benefits in the home when you're asking kids to put away their toys.
But this also develops into a larger perspective on taking care of the world.
A Toddler Morning at CBI Preschool
It is a beautiful morning, and Hummingbird teachers Leah and Dávi are greeting our littlest ones as they climb up the stairs with parents.
After hugs goodbye, we get right to exploring the porch setup today.
A few Hummingbirds go right to the snack table to fuel up and have a morning chat, while some others spot the trains and plop down to get busy fitting train tracks together, and other friends head over to the book basket or the busy boards.
Next it’s time for morning diapers. After everyone’s had a turn, we clean up the porch and head out for our morning adventure to one of our favorite destinations…Wall of Pans!
We practice moving as a group out of our cabin and across the meadow, and before we know it, we spot the trail. After a short hike, the forest opens up & Hummingbirds scatter to dive into forest play.
There is, of course, a wooden wall hung with plenty of pots and pans to drum on. Endless leaves to crunch through, hickory nut shells to collect, and sticks to gather.
Some Hummingbirds rush to climb onto the big bench swings, while others head for the fallen tree that has become one of our favorite places to practice climbing.
In the center of all is our “forest kitchen” - benches and bins with pots to do our forest cooking. This morning, two benches have been pushed together, and one tot has realized that our kitchen has been transformed into a sailboat!
We are going sailing on the ocean! Soon friends are calling out to one another to “come get in the boat”! Squeezed together, they laugh and giggle. Soon they are all looking through their “telescopes”, spotting pirates and rocking on the ocean waves.
It is a marvelous morning of bonding together in our pretend play. When its time to pack up to go back to the cabin for lunch, storytime, and naptime, we are full of smiles.
Take the Next Step
Come see if CBI Forest School is the right Charlottesville preschool
for your toddler by visiting our location, meeting our staff,
and seeing our school in person.