Williamsburg Parent Cooperative Preschool

The Three Year Old Year at Co-op

Emerging from the more tentative push-pull and semi-isolation of two-year old play, the threes year provides complex practice in the social skills and interaction that are so pivotal to the bonded friendships of fours, and school life beyond. It is a year of explosion into language, learning negotiation, discovering wordplay, making and getting jokes, mastering new motor skills, stepping into challenges, loving to be and do and make things.

We design a program to provide:

Seasonal themes to underline a growing sense of the world outside
Open-ended art and child-centered craft opportunities to build self-esteem and motor skills, and the joy of doing it all-by-yourself
Classroom cooking and science experiments to foster competence, sensory appreciation, cause and effect, and fun!
Dramatic play and dress-ups to stimulate conversation, imagination and delight
Manipulative and blocks for problem-solving, spatial relations, and negotiation
Music and books, fingerplays and poetry, to help us move and think and giggle
An up-to-date, safe, and exciting playground

We play with light and color, letters and numbers, water and ice, wood and paper, bugs and birdnests, playdough and bread-dough—anything, in fact, that stretches our bodies, minds or spirits.

Our 3’s Teachers

Sue Barton

Like many of my Coop colleagues, I always knew that teaching and working with children was my calling. From the time I was young I spent a lot of time around children and loved helping out in nurseries, preschools and the kindergarten class in which my mother worked for several years. I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from the University of Pittsburgh. My teaching career began in the Williamsburg James City County Schools, and I spent 14 years teaching at the elementary level in both the United States and Overseas for the Department of Defense Dependent Schools. I have a Master’s degree in International Education from the George Washington University.

All three of my sons had the privilege of attending the Coop. My husband, Jim, and I both learned much from the teachers during the eight years that our boys were part of the school. The Coop community was a nurturing place for our whole family, and we are grateful for the lasting friendships that we made during our time here. I was always impressed by the hard work and dedication of the caring Co-op staff, and I’m honored to be a part of this talented group of teachers. Now I get to share the same kind of joys that we experienced with someone else’s family. I have fun trying to create some of the magic that made my children’s preschool years special.

Martie Serverin

I think I have come full circle in my teaching experience. I started as a student teacher at Associated Parents Nursery School (a parent coop just off the Purdue Univ. campus), followed by 6 years as a public school kindergarten teacher in Delaware. My family enjoyed 5 years as co-opers when my 2 daughters spent their preschool years in the Unitarian Cooperative Playschool in West Chester, Pa. I finished my masters degree in early childhood education at West Chester University, and was hoping to teach at the Playschool when our family relocated to New Jersey. With no cooperative preschools in the area, I taught 3’s, 4’s and 5’s for 19 years at a church preschool in New Jersey. As a preschool teacher, I find I am always learning from the children in my class. All preschool parents and teachers know the energy and enthusiasm of preschoolers is boundless. It makes them fun and sometimes challenging to teach. I am thrilled to finally be teaching at a cooperative preschool! The partnership of parents and teachers working and playing together to guide a child’s early school years is a special experience. Although my daughters are 28 and 31, I still credit the child centered and play oriented experiences at their coop with giving them a joy in experimenting with materials (especially messy stuff), good social skills, and a positive self concept that has made them good students, life long learners and successful adults.

Diane Lee

I am thrilled and honored to be joining the co-op family as a 3s teacher this year! Growing up I always knew I’d become a teacher as all of the influential women in my life had dedicated their lives to this profession. I graduated from Colgate University with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and math, and then from George Washington University with a master’s in education. I worked for 8 years for West Point and then WJCC public schools teaching 5th graders. When our 3rd child was born, I became a full time mother.

Our third and fourth children were lucky enough to attend co-op, and I loved working in the classrooms, learning from the talented teachers, and being so intimately involved in my children’s development. Co-op became much more than just a preschool to me… it helped me to crystallize my own philosophy of education and to love each child’s uniqueness. Co-op was that village, that home away from home, where my kids could be kids and my family was nurtured. The friendships that my children and our family made at co-op remain very strong today. Now my children are 16, 13, 9, and 7, and I think they are just as excited as I am about joining the co-op staff!

3’s Classes
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 9:00-12:00
Tuesday, Thursday 9:00-12:00
Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-3:30