An overview of our preschool prep program:

Get in the Groove for Preschool is a preschool prep program for 2 to 4 year olds in Hoboken. It incorporates music, art, dance, drama, books and storytelling, fun science projects, and yoga.

For the 2025/2026 school year, we will be offering the following classes:

• a 2 hour class from 9.15am to 11.15am on Tuesday and Thursday mornings (class size will be 5 students) - 1 spot left;

• a 3 hour class from 9am to 12pm on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings for 3-4 year olds (class size will be 5 students) - this class is full; and;

• a 3 hour class from 9am to 12pm on Tuesday and Thursday mornings (class size will be 5 students) - this class is full..

We start every class with open play. The classroom will be set up with 3-4 different areas: a sensory table, a reading area, a building area and an area for trains and trucks. This gives the children the opportunity to either gravitate to the activities they most enjoy or to explore different activities with the support and encouragement of their teachers.

At the end of open play, we will clean up and gather in a circle for our Welcome Circle Time. We will sing our Hello Song and talk about our theme for that week. We will sing songs, do finger rhymes and/or read books related to the theme. We will also sing songs about the days of the week, months of the year and weather.

We then do a yoga session which gives the children a chance to move and stretch their bodies while also practicing breathing techniques which can help SO much in managing the big emotions that are common with this age group. We use the breathing techniques that we learn during yoga to help a child to calm down if they become upset during class. Our teachers do a wonderful job of incorporating the theme of the week into the yoga session so each yoga session feels like a story time brought to life with movement.

After yoga, we will do an art or sensory project. During the art and sensory portion of the class, the children will have a great time exploring a world of color and textures with paints, crayons, play-doh, sensory bins and more. We will explore a variety of painting methods and tools. Our focus is on the process and joy of creating and interacting with the materials, not the outcome.

After our art or sensory session, we will take the children to wash their hands ready for snack time.

When snack time is over, we do some music and movement activities together. The music and movement portion of the class is all about encouraging the innate rhythm and the natural love of music and movement that children demonstrate whenever they hear music. We will use shaky eggs, scarves, bells, drum sticks and more.

We will then do a fun and age-appropriate language, math or science activity or game.

We will have at least one group story time during class and there will also be additional small group story times during open play for the children who are drawn to the reading area.

Each class ends with bubbles and our Goodbye Circle Time where we will sing some final songs together as well as our Goodbye Song.

The class is intentionally broken down into small segments to both reflect how long this age group are able to focus and also to give them lots of opportunities to practice transitioning from one activity to another.

Our program provides a loving and nurturing environment where our young students can start to take their first steps toward independence and gaining confidence.  We work closely with each family to ease this transition for both the child and the parent. As a mother of three children, my oldest child walked into her first classroom and never looked back, and my two younger children became intimately acquainted with my legs as they clung desperately to me while crying at full volume . Having gone through this with my middle child, I found The Nest preschool for my youngest child, and the loving environment they provided gradually coaxed him from my leg and we watched him gain confidence in a richly creative classroom and loving community.

Having gone through that experience myself, I'm committed to providing a nurturing and creative environment that will feel safe and welcoming to even the most hesitant of children.

We will work with each family to make the separation as gentle as possible. However, we will encourage you to trust us to support your child through their sadness or other emotions when you leave. We assure you that we will reach out to you if your child is inconsolable. We will treat your child the way we would want our own children to be treated. When my son was at The Nest, the teachers encouraged me to walk away while he was still sobbing which was SO SO SO hard to do. However, as I paused around the corner from where his classroom was, I was able to hear for myself how quickly his crying stopped. When I picked him up at the end of the class, he was full of smiles and tales of what he had done that morning. Even as a high schooler, he still talks about how happy he was there. He wouldn’t have had the chance to experience all those wonderful experiences if I hadn’t trusted the teachers that it was OK to walk away while he was crying.

One thing that I believe passionately - both as a mother and as a teacher - is that children should be allowed to feel ALL of their feelings. We don’t dismiss or diminish how sad they are to say goodbye to their parents or caregivers. We give them time to feel and process that emotion while gently encouraging them to explore the classroom or to sit and read with a teacher. We have had children cry at drop-off on their first day and then cry when they had to go home at the end of the morning. We fully expect to go on a rollercoaster of emotions with our students and we are there for all of the emotions that show up!

I am so very proud of this program and of all the children who have participated in it before starting preschool. We love bumping into Get in the Groove for Preschool alumni as we walk around Hoboken!

If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Click here to send an email with any questions that you have.

Sally

Sally Robertson,
Founder of Creative Groove Studio