Peregrine School (Davis, California)

The Peregrine School is a private non-profit preschool and elementary school located in Davis, California. It was founded in 2007 by mother and daughter team Lorie Hammond, PhD and Elena Whitcombe, MD.

Peregrine School consists of a preschool, nicknamed Escuelita; a pre-K/K class, nicknamed Primaria; and a combined K-2 elementary class. Escuelita is open to children ages 2 to 4, Primaria to ages 4 to 6, and the elementary class to ages 6 to 8. All class levels at Peregrine School are bilingual (Spanish-English) and project-based, influenced by the Reggio Emilia philosophy.

Why Spanish?

Early childhood is the best time for children to acquire language in a natural, oral setting—their minds absorb language like sponges. If a second language is added early, it is painless for a child to learn, it will become more natural to the child than a language learned later in life, and it will help the child to learn additional languages more easily. There is also much research evidence that speaking two or more languages increases a child’s level of general intelligence.

Spanish is the most important second language in California. Spanish fluency has immediate applications to daily life here. We intend to balance our student population to include many native Spanish speakers. Our main teachers are native Spanish speakers who model the language, sheltering it for accessibility to the children through the use of visuals, music, and the like. Fantastic Friday science and art activities, music, and yoga are taught in English and supplemented in Spanish.

Peregrine School is a dual-immersion program. Lessons and routines are delivered in Spanish by the teachers for part of the day, and reading and math are taught in English. Since the emphasis of the preschool is on oral rather than written language, young children are not required to read in a language that is not their first. This will ensure that children can learn to read in their own language, then transfer their skills to literacy in a second.

Why a family school?

Peregrine School was founded on the idea that families are a child's first and most important teachers, and that a community of families and teachers can guide our children by pooling their various funds of knowledge. In asking parents to participate in the school, we hope to build a caring community of families who support all of our children, and to share with all the many talents we individually possess. To accomplish the first goal, we provide enrichments like yoga and Spanish classes for adults, potluck dinners, discussion groups, and family outings. And by volunteering in the classroom, parents get to know each others' children, building our sense of community. To accomplish the second, we provide opportunities for parents to share their special skills and interests with the students and staff at school.

Parent involvement can take many forms, such as volunteer work in the classroom, driving and chaperoning field trips, and taking on a family task. We will work with parents to create the right method of involvement for each family.

What is a Reggio Emilia-oriented school?

Children’s work is play. Collaborative play, the business of school, is enhanced by two things: a rich environment designed to provide stimulation, challenges, and open-ended spaces for creative exploration; and the mentoring of expert teachers, who interact with children and model skills in various intelligence areas and the process of problem-solving.

In the classroom, we employ an integrated thematic curriculum, which nurtures learning in many intelligence areas: linguistic, mathematical, visual, musical, kinesthetic, inter-personal, intra-personal, and naturalistic. Using this approach, themes are chosen by the week or month, and a series of experiences in all domains are planned to explore the theme. This approach makes learning comprehensive—children can integrate what they are learning about the harvest or phases of the moon in science lessons, stories, music, and dance expression.

Young children are open to learning in every domain. Our goal is to create a balanced set of opportunities for learning in all domains, rather than to focus only on language and mathematics, as many school programs do. This goal is modeled by the Loris Malaguzzi's school in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The key is to create an ever-changing, creative learning environment in which children can guide their own projects, with direction provided by knowledgeable adults who are experts in their area. Essential to this model is the idea that children do best when guided by experts. Children at Peregrine School will interact with a variety of professional artists as well as their teachers during the school day.

For more information on Malaguzzi's Reggio Emilia school, see The Hundred Languages of Children: the Reggio Emilia Approach, by Carolyn Edwards.

School website: http://www.theperegrineproject.net