Programs & Curriculum

At CEDS, social responsibility is a critical theme in all our lessons and conversations. We believe it is never too early to teach children how to be good citizens. Designed to help the children begin to develop their character and understand their relationship with the world around them, our social responsibility curriculum teachers students about empathy, kindness and the consequences of their actions. Through everyday conversations, interactions, and daily routines they are developing a sense of tolerance, compassion, and the importance of diversity and cultural competence.

Beginning with the development of a social contract in each classroom, the children start the year with a discussion of responsibility, to themselves, their classroom community and eventually to the community at large. They learn to listen and respect one another’s ideas and perspectives. They learn to persevere through conflict when it arises and develop strong relationships full of awareness and acceptance. In exploring their similarities and differences they come to value the diversity among themselves and leave our school as empathic and compassionate citizens.

In addition, each year The Church of The Epiphany Day School undertakes a number of community service projects. We believe that it is important for young children to learn social responsibility early and can do so by being empowered to take action. Therefore, all community service projects involve collaboration with an organization that can be easily translated to the children in an age-appropriate way and which the children can actively participate in.

Throughout the year the children are exposed to a range of art materials and processes including tempera painting, charcoal, collage, clay building, watercolor and more. They are encouraged to explore a sense of freedom in their artistic expression and they discover their artistic potential through goal setting and long-term project orientation as well as spontaneous creative expression. Each classroom is equipped with an array of open-ended art materials, many of which are recycled, that the children have access to on a daily basis. The opportunity to explore these materials is unstructured and helps encourage artistic creativity. On occasion the children will participate in a structured teacher-led art class where they are exposed to various new and exciting tools, methods, materials, artists and artistic styles for inspiration and integration of personal style. In addition, throughout the year, they engage in curriculum-centered art/construction and large-scale building. (Ex., They might work together to construct an airplane if they are studying air travel or transportation). No matter what type of artistic endeavor a child is engaged in, the CEDS teachers emphasize the process over the product. Our goal is to help the children deepen their sense of creativity, to begin to foster a love of the arts and to encourage them to take creative risks and see their ideas through to completion.

Cooking with children emphasizes measurement, following a recipe, observing textures, smells, tastes, transformation of food from one state to another, building vocabulary and enjoying the joint experience of creating and eating. Cooking experiences at CEDS involve a combination of teacher or family planned recipes and child derived cooking activities in which the children will be given the liberty to choose ingredients, test out recipes and attempt to make changes in them after tasting, etc. Cooking experiences are mostly edible endeavors but at times they are purely done for the fun of mixing ingredients to see what happens. An attempt is made by the teachers (particularly as they progress to the 3s and 4s classes) to incorporate concepts such as multiculturalism and health into our cooking curriculum. In addition, the children occasionally bake treats for other communities within the church, the church office staff, the Sunday school children, the brown bag lunch program, etc. It is our hope that this effort on the part of the children will help to build community and foster a sense of the joy of service to others.