Our program of activities at the Rockland is a combination of both social and academic activities. The social activities are those parts of the program that encourage the children to interact with one another, to gain experience in playing with all types of personalities, and thereby develop self-esteem and self confidence on a social level. Each session at the Rockland is like a little microcosm of society, with all sorts of personalities represented. We have verbal and non-verbal children, funny and serious children, shy and outgoing children, etc. The more a child interacts with all these different personalities, the more self assured they become in the knowledge that they can be “friends with anyone”. Our academic activities are those parts of the program that encourage the children to listen to directions, to follow directions, to develop their attention spans, to work on fine motor coordination skills, (in order to develop the small muscles in their fingers) doing such things as painting, cutting, writing, coloring, lacing, ripping, etc. Each of our six classrooms are set up by age, so that three-year olds are in one classroom, four-year olds are in another, etc. Each classrooms’ curriculum is different depending upon the age, and developmental needs of that particular class. Each teacher starts out at the beginning of the year with one-step directions, and then proceeds to two-steps, three-steps, four- steps, etc. There is much individual attention afforded to each child in guiding them through a series of skill-building activities. Each of these components provides an important aspect to building a well rounded preschool experience for our children.