Hempfield Family Child Development Center

HFCDCs goal is to provide high quality care and education where each childs holistic development is the focus. We focus on nurturing and growing each childs physical social and cognitive skills in developmentally appropriate ways because each child develops at their own rate. Since we focus on children as individuals we keep a low teacher-to-child ratio of 1-to-5 in order to successfully meet each childs individual needs. We enroll children from 13 months to kindergarten.
We are a multi-age program that is play based with a balance of structured and free choice play. We choose to be a multi-age program because there are numerous benefits and advantages. These benefits are not only ones that we see in our center but are benefits that have been recognized through research worldwide. The first and most noticeable advantage is the rate at which children acquire social and language skills. When children of different ages are placed in the same setting the setting becomes a unique language rich environment full of various stages of development that has great potential to build each childs language and social skills.
Another key benefit of the multi-age program is that children interact and naturally assume empathizing and nurturing roles toward each other. A multi-age program also benefits siblings. When siblings are placed in a new environment together it reduces fear and separation anxiety. An additional advantage of this type of program is that there are a limited number of transitions during their years of attendance. By keeping an open classroom where all children parents and staff know and relate to each other on a daily basis attachments are made and children do not have to transition to new rooms and teachers as they get older.