2019-20  Gan Shelanu Preschool Registration

Registration Now Open for the 2020-21 School Year!
For kids 20-61 months as of September 1, 2020

Call for more information or to schedule a tour. 952.545.8694.

Registration for Gan Shelanu Preschool is in full swing!  Children 6 weeks to pre-kindergarten are eligible to enroll for the 2020-21 school year. The Gan offers 2-, 3- and 5-day programs as well as early morning and extended day childcare options. For more information or to arrange a tour of the school, contact Janice Schachtman, Gan Shelanu Preschool Director, 952.545.8694.
 
Why should you choose the Gan? Here are a few reasons:

• Gan Shelanu offers a comprehensive curriculum with opportunities for students in a wide range of areas helping them achieve cognitive, social, emotional and physical developmental milestones.

 

• Gan Shelanu has proven to provide a strong foundation for students’ further education.

 

• Gan Shelanu has a low staff to student ratio – well under the State’s guidelines.

 

• Gan Shelanu has a fully-equipped Science Enrichment Room with an on-site science specialist.  The students have listened to their hearts using a stethoscope, built igloos with salt and ice, discovered that only female mosquitos bite, found out that kangaroos can swim and cannot hop backwards,and learned that a cockroach can live without its head for three days!  Who knew?!

 

• Gan Shelanu staff dedicated an entire morning to “egg-speriments”. Students learned how to tell the difference between a hard boiled and raw egg by spinning it, squeezing it and holding a flashlight up to it.; an egg will freeze in 1.5 minutes in sub-zero temperatures; and, if you stand on eggs, they don’t break!

 

• Gan Shelanu has a twice weekly music specialist for all ages and a weekly Hebrew teacher.

 

• Gan Shelanu’s after-school enrichment classes are included in all afternoon childcare programs - no additional cost.

 

• Gan Shelanu has a unique preschool-specific gemilut chasadim (acts of lovingkindness) and tzedakah curriculum. Children learn what it means to do as well as give. Gan students sing their hearts out for residents of Knollwood Place and the Sholom Home during Jewish holidays and deliver hundreds of apple and honey and shalach manot baskets to homebound congregants at Rosh Hashanah and Purim.

 

• Gan Shelanu students put over 300 cans of soup in a humungous Campbell’s soup barrel to be donated to the food shelf during the frigid winter weather. 

 

• Gan Shelanu students hung over 200 pairs of new socks on a long clothesline. They then boxed up the socks and delivered them to a local women’s shelter.

 

• Gan Shelanu students put over 200 stuffed animals on a makeshift Noah’s Ark. The animals were then delivered to an inner-city medical clinic.

 

• Gan Shelanu families donated over 500 books to the “Children’s Literacy Program” at Hennepin County Medical Center.

 

• Gan Shelanu students receive hot lunch three times a week. Kids (and parents!) give the optional hot lunch program two thumbs up!

 

• Gan Shelanu hosted the 4th annual Hanukah Hop with over 300 people attending. Pizza! DJ! Face painting! Dancing! Hanukkah cookie decorating! Latkes!  Lots of fun!

 

• Gan Shelanu’s budding botanists planted indoor gardens to celebrate Tu B’Shvat. Herbs, sweet potato vines, fairy gardens, avocado trees and “grass heads” were only some of the “greenery” abounding in classrooms.

 

• Gan Shelanu’s outdoor garden is tended by the children and resident horticulturists, Farmer Joan and Farmer Colleen. The children grow many kinds of vegetables and enjoy eating them at snacktime. Last summer’s crop yielded so much produce that the excess of vegetables was donated to a local food shelf.

 

• Gan Shelanu PreKers study about Minnesota. The kids learn there are 11,000 lakes in the state, the loon is the state bird, the lady slipper is the state flower and that Dorothy from the “Wizard of Oz” was born here.

 

• Gan Shelanu staff receive on-going training throughout the school year.

 

• Gan Shelanu is licensed by the Minnesota Department of Human Services and last year received an unprecedented, perfect – no citations review.

 

• Families whose children are not currently enrolled in the Gan Shelanu Preschool may call the Gan Office to receive an application form for the coming school year, which begins fall, 2019. Programs are available for children ages birth to PreKindergarten.