Love, Wonder, Play
Who we are
Crozet Avenue Christian Preschool is a fully licensed preschool in the heart of downtown Crozet, Virginia. At Crozet Avenue, we are defined by our small class sizes, by our remarkable teachers with early childhood education expertise, and by the loving relationships we build with our students, our preschool families, and the local Crozet community.
We are anchored in the values of love, wonder, and play:
We believe each member of our school community is worthy of great love, and our interactions are infused with gentleness and care for the whole child and family.
We foster curiosity and exploration as our students encounter a stimulating classroom environment full of wonder.
We laugh, move, and celebrate the value of creative play that makes learning fun and dynamic for our students.
Our learning model is a fusion of play-based education and foundational academic skill building. We aim to equip each student with a passion for creativity and discovery, with age-appropriate social skills for cooperative play, and with the literacy and mathematics skills necessary for kindergarten readiness.
Below you can find more specific information about what makes Crozet Avenue Christian Preschool unique. Have more questions or want to see what we’re all about in person? Contact our Director, Krista Campbell, to schedule a tour today!
Our learning model
We believe that children learn best through a dynamic environment of play and hands-on learning. We also believe in equipping children with the building blocks of early literacy and mathematics to build a core academic foundation for their elementary years. As a result, Crozet Avenue offers a fusion learning environment: play-based opportunities for discovery and creativity throughout the day, balanced with structured academic skill building for our pre-K learners.
We believe that children learn incredibly important skills through play.
Our teachers create classrooms full of theme-based sensory exploration, open-ended toys to encourage engineering skills and creativity, and dramatic play areas that promote student cooperation, teamwork and social skills. We also see movement, music, and art as invaluable tools for kinesthetic learning and self-expression, and the incorporation of these extracurriculars throughout our week creates a preschool environment that is both vibrant and dynamic.
We believe that early literacy and mathematics skills are an essential element for later elementary school success.
For our youngest students, teachers build in exposure to early-literacy and mathematics skills throughout the classroom and in group learning times, offering hands-on assistance with pre-writing and fine motor skills for an important literacy foundation. For our older (pre-K) students, teachers incorporate structured learning throughout the day to build and practice literacy/writing skills, as well as to gain familiarity with mathematical concepts. Our goal for our pre-K students is to achieve kindergarten readiness: we aim to equip students with the social skills, independent thinking skills, and literacy and mathematics foundations that will enable them to have a smooth and successful transition to kindergarten.
What does it mean to be ‘community-focused’?
Crozet Avenue Christian Preschool sits on the main stretch of Crozet Avenue in downtown Crozet. Our school is attached to Crozet United Methodist Church and within a stone’s throw from the businesses and community buildings that define downtown Crozet. We are honored to be a part of the heartbeat of the Crozet experience, and as a preschool we strive to serve and give back to the community around us.
What does this look like? We are always on the lookout for ways to partner with and bless our neighbors! We are privileged to be located so close to the resources around us, so we take advantage of the chance to walk across the street to the Crozet Public Library and enjoy storytime with the librarians! We take a walking field trip to the post office to drop off cards and baked goods for the postal workers on Valentine’s Day. We enjoy visits from the fire department and the local volunteer firefighters who are also parents in our school community. We host a Harvest Festival for our families and friends to come celebrate the fall with games and food and a hayride outside. We partner with local Crozet businesses to throw our Peach Palooza in the spring and offer a plethora of amazing silent auction treats from our favorite Crozet vendors!
Our goal as a preschool is to embody Christ’s commandment to love your neighbor (Mark 12:31). This year at Crozet Avenue, that will look like monthly outreach projects to bless those who serve the Crozet community. One month it will be a food drive for the Crozet UMC Grace Grocery program. One month we will assemble care packages and notes for our local first responders. Another month we will create artwork and cards and letters to spread love to those in the retirement communities and senior care centers nearby. Through a culture of service, we hope to spread the love of God and the joy we feel at our preschool with everyone around us.
We love this beautiful community of Crozet, and it is our delight to be a part of it and to model kindness to our students and our neighbors in all we do.
What does it look like to be a Christian preschool?
We believe that God has breathed life into every person on this earth, and we see the image of God in each of our students and in their families. Rooted in this truth, we see each child as beautiful, worthy, important, and good (Psalm 139: 13-14). No matter your family’s or student’s faith background, you are welcome at this school!
As a Christian preschool, our first and foremost value is love. Being loved by God, we now love one another (1 John 4:11). This love of God infuses every interaction at our school: we love the children who are entrusted into our care, and we work joyfully every day for the well-being of each precious student, putting them first and serving them as Christ came to serve and love us (Matthew 20:28).
Our hope is that every family who comes to our preschool can tangibly feel this love. We pledge to honor your child and your family as wonderfully made in the image of God, and worthy of love.
So what else does preschool spiritual formation look like? Woven throughout the year in everyday interactions, our teachers will share age-appropriate messages of God’s love for them. Once a week, students are invited to chapel to learn Bible stories and see hands-on examples of God’s love. As we are privileged to be connected to Crozet United Methodist Church, many of these weekly chapel services will be led by Pastor Christy in the sanctuary of Crozet UMC next door. In addition, our students learn songs of thanks, joy and God’s love in the classroom and in music class as they go through each week. God’s love is a visible, audible and tangible theme throughout our classrooms, reminding students at every turn that, above all else, they are loved.
Students and families from all walks of faith are welcome at our school. Our hope and prayer is that each student and family who arrives here will be met at the green doors of Crozet Avenue Christian Preschool by great love.