Fulfilling the promise of childhood since 1979

Creating a Caring Educational Community

The Child Educational Center is an innovative, nationally-accredited early care and education organization with a pioneering focus on progressive education and outdoor learning. The CEC’s programs have served as a leader in early childhood education since 1979, and emphasize a commitment to nurturing children’s physical and psychological well-being.

The CEC follows the natural outdoor classroom philosophy in our care and education of young children. Researchers have established that to nurture the whole child, early childhood education needs to follow the fundamental principle that children are learning everywhere and all the time. Instead of developmentally-inappropriate early academics, children need a broad variety of learning experiences and opportunities to grow in areas such as gross and fine motor development, social-emotional development, language development, and creative expression. Mastery of the skills associated with these areas is critical for healthy development as well as later academic success, and requires an educational format that is very different from a traditional elementary classroom. The outdoor classroom evolves from the real needs of children, offers activities that are personally meaningful to them, and fully embraces developmentally-appropriate practices in early care.

In 1994, the CEC began providing consulting services on the design, development and implementation of child care programs through our initiative, the Outdoor Classroom Project.