The Youngerman Center Preschool, a SUNY Fredonia facility that offers a chance for children with special needs to learn from their peers, will begin its fifth year on Wednesday, Sept. 6. Openings exist for community children who have no special needs.
Running Monday through Friday mornings from 8:15 to11:15 in a classroom on the first floor of Thompson Hall on campus, the class is an integrated preschool program for 3 and 4-year olds that operates in conjunction with the Silver Creek Montessori School. The class is team-taught by certified special education staff, a speech-language pathologist and graduate student interns from the SUNY Fredonia Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology.
According to Clinic Director Michele Notte, the Youngerman Center Preschool is one of the few integrated preschools in Chautauqua County. It offers a chance for children with special needs to learn from their peers, while the other children serve as role models for their new friends.
The Youngerman Center Preschool is designed around a language-enriched curriculum with weekly themes, fostering development in language, phonemic awareness (a pre-reading skill) as well as fine motor, gross motor, social/emotional and cognitive skills. The core curriculum targets activities that are tailored to each child’s developmental level.
Six of the children in the class were identified by their school district as having special needs in cognitive, language and fine motor skills. The other six children are community based with no special needs.
There are openings available for community children for 2, 3 or 5 mornings per week. A modest tuition is charged. Information about the program and how to enroll is available from Clinical Supervisor Melissa Sidor, Preschool Program Coordinator, at 716-673-4676 or 716-673-3203.
