Princeton Nursery School
78 Leigh Avenue
Princeton, NJ 08540

Telephone: (609) 921-8606
Fax: (609) 921-8898
Contact: Wendy Cotton, Executive Director
Email: PNSkids@gmail.com

Website: www.princetonnurseryschool.org

Princeton Nursery School is a small, private, non-profit, educational child care facility that provides for the developmental needs of children between the ages of 2 ½ and 5 years. Since its founding in 1929, Princeton Nursery School’s mission has been to provide a positive and supportive preschool experience for families at an affordable cost.

PNS utilizes the High/Scope curriculum focusing on “active learning”. Active learning is the belief that children learn best through active experiences with people, materials, events and ideas. Through a warm and supportive environment, children develop skills and self esteem.

Tuition is affordable at Princeton Nursery School because of grants from State of New Jersey, The United Way of Greater Mercer County, County of Mercer and generous donations from local foundations and individuals.

Thanks to the support of the Princeton community, PNS continues to provide a positive and supportive preschool experience that builds on our Seventy Seven year tradition.

Community and Population Served by the Organization

Multicultural from inception, our student population – primarily Hispanic and African American – reflects the community of which we are proud to be a part. We currently serve 44 children, and in an ongoing effort to build strong families, we work hand-in hand with the parents and with community organizations.

Research Questions

• What is the best vehicle to engage the family of a learner?  Researchers have suggested family science, family literacy, and family arts models, but the Princeton Nursery school would like to investigate which model is most successful in engaging the families of nursery school children and meeting learning, social and emotional goals?  A student could suggest a model to transfer what students learn in nursery school to activities at home. 
• The Princeton Nursery School is concerned with parental literacy rates, particularly among mothers. The Princeton Nursery School is interested in an asset assessment of literacy programs in the Princeton area. What programs are currently available to families? What other programs could be brought to the community? How can community organizations like the Princeton Nursery School make adults feel more comfortable attending a literacy program? Students could collaborate with the Princeton Nursery School to design an action plan that would help the Nursery School inform and support mothers in utilizing these programs.
• How do Princeton Nursery School graduates compare to other children in kindergarten adjustment and performance? In what way could this be most accurately evaluated?  The Princeton Nursery School would also like an assessment of their graduates in the long term; this would include research into how its graduates compare to other children throughout elementary school in terms of social, emotional, and verbal skills as well as confidence level. The school would also be interested in research on the child’s family.
• The Princeton Nursery School is interested in having a student conduct a study of how current immigration policies and ongoing deportations are impacting the student population economically, sociologically, and psychologically.

• The Princeton Nursery School works with the parents of the students to provide them with the necessary information and tools for them to help their children, providing workshops on a wide variety of topics, from nutrition to affordable health care. To aid in this purpose, the Princeton Nursery School would be interested in working with a student to produce an easy to understand, comprehensive brochure (preferably both in English and Spanish) outlining the resources available in the community, in terms of food, legal aid, health care, etc.

• Bilingual kindergarten teachers in Princeton Regional Schools have observed that children who are fully fluent in Spanish by the time they enter kindergarten are better prepared to learn English than their peers who are only semi-fluent in both English and Spanish. How does a child’s fluency in Spanish help his or her ability to learn English? If fluency in Spanish for children from Spanish-speaking families does indeed help them to learn English, how does parents’ literacy affect children’s Spanish acquisition and subsequent English fluency?

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