Mission: To provide all families with 4-year-old children living in the towns served by RSU #1 access to quality, developmentally appropriate preschool programs. Read our annual report here.
The C.H.O.I.C.E.S program is a free Pre-K program offered to 4-year-old children living in the communities served by RSU1. There is a choice of 7 locations that provide the free CHOICES program three mornings per week during the school year. Some of the sites also offer wrap around childcare that can be purchased by families before or after the regular C.H.O.I.C.E.S. morning program.
Placement options:
The C.H.O.I.C.E.S options are located at seven sites: The Children’s School House, Bath Area YMCA, Bath Family Focus, Dike Newell School, Woolwich Central School, Phippsburg Elementary School, and Bath Head Start. Please click on the tool bar at the top of this page to learn more about each of the program sites.
Research based curricula in all programs is chosen from one of the following:
Creative Curriculum
The focus of the Creative Curriculum is to help children become enthusiastic learners. The curriculum identifies goals in four areas of development:
Social: To help children feel comfortable in school, trust their new environment, make friends, and feel they are part of a group.
Emotional: To help children gain pride and self-confidence, develop independence and self-control, and have a positive attitude towards life.
Cognitive: To help children become confident learners by letting them try out their own ideas and experience success. The Creative Curriculum aids children in acquiring learning skills enabling them to solve problems, ask questions, and use words to describe their ideas, observations, and feelings.
Physical: To help children increase their large and small muscle skills and feel confident about what their bodies can do.
Tools of the Mind Curriculum
Tools of the Mind is a comprehensive curriculum including content that meets all state and national standards. It is based on a specific set of beliefs about how children learn. Mature intentional make-believe play forms the foundation of cognitive and emotional self-regulation development.
In a Tools preschool:
Practice in self-regulated learning is embedded in all activities. Tools instructional interactions are planned to scaffold each child’s learning and to help teachers be effective in identifying specific teachable moments. Teachers focus on helping children become intentional and reflective learners, creating a classroom in which instruction in literacy, mathematics, and science reflects each child’s learning capacity.
For more information contact CHOICES Coordinator Rosalie Perkins.
Dike Newell School
3 Wright Drive, Bath
443-8285
rperkins@rsu1.org
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