At Bertschi, play is purposeful and learning is joyful. Students arrive full of ideas and leave confident, capable, and ready for kindergarten and beyond.
Take a Peek Into Our Program
If you want your kids to just experience joy–daily, regular joy–as a priority, Bertschi is the school for you. Bertschi Pre-K Parent
Play Is How Children Learn & How They Are Taught
Bertschi School's approach is rooted in the belief that children are capable, curious, and full of ideas. This means the curriculum emerges each year in response to the children in the room. Educators listen carefully to what children are noticing and wondering about, then design experiences that help those ideas grow. The classroom itself is a teacher: materials are placed with intention, activities are set out before students arrive, and the environment is designed to spark inquiry at every turn.
Literacy grows through storytelling, conversation, songs, rhymes, and early writing. Mathematical thinking develops through counting, sorting, building, and measuring. Design thinking begins here, as students ask questions, test ideas, and learn that failure is information. Social-emotional learning is the thread that holds it all together.
Outdoor environments are thoughtfully designed to encourage children to investigate the natural world, solve problems, and express their ideas through play.
Bertschi uses a Reggio Emilia approach to pre-K education to build academic competency through carefully designed experiences and purposeful play.
This is such a great stepping stone into kindergarten because they play, but then you'll sit down with the teachers and they'll present you this folder of incredible work. Bertschi Pre-K Parent
Bertschi's Reggio Emilia-inspired pre-K does not follow a fixed, one-size-fits-all curriculum. Instead, the curriculum emerges each year in response to the children in the classroom. Our experienced educators thoughtfully document student thinking, study what children are noticing and wondering about, and use those observations to guide future learning.
In our pre-K classrooms, educators act as guides, co-creators, and thoughtful questioners. The environment is intentionally designed to spark curiosity, invite exploration, and help children see themselves as capable thinkers and problem-solvers. Experiences are designed to help children build relationships and work together as a community.
Bertschi teachers skillfully weave foundational literacy, math, science, social-emotional learning, and problem-solving into projects that are meaningful to children. Academics are not left to chance. Quite the opposite.
Our practice includes a studio space where a curated set of materials of different shapes and textures (such as buttons, sticks, rocks, fabric scraps, etc.), offer children opportunities to imagine and create. In the studio, children build, test ideas, solve problems, and revise their work.
One year, students became deeply curious about treehouses. Educators responded by inviting children to research, design, and build their own models in the studio. As students labeled their plans, they practiced early writing and letter-sound connections. As they built, they explored shapes, measurement, and spatial reasoning. When they shared their designs with classmates, they developed oral language, confidence, and collaboration.
Yes! At Bertschi, play is not separate from learning. Play is the way young children investigate the world, build relationships, test theories, and make meaning. A value we take from Reggio Emilia is to honor the “hundred languages of children,” an idea that children express their thinking in many ways: through words, drawing, building, dramatic play, movement, music, sculpture, and conversation.
Pre-K at a Glance
For children aged 4 by August 31
5 days per week
School day runs 8:30 AM to 2:45 PM
Early care available from 7:45 AM and after-care until 6:00 PM
Children learn in different ways and at different paces. At Bertschi, pre-K experiences are designed at each child's just right level, with educators closely observing students' interests and growth to extend learning in responsive, timely ways. That ongoing cycle of observation, documentation, and intentional design ensures every child is consistently challenged without being pushed, and supported without being held back. Children move on to kindergarten as engaged, confident learners.
Connected to the Whole School
Children in pre-K at Bertschi are part of the broader school community from the start. Specialist teachers in Spanish, library, PE, drama, creative movement, and music enrich the program every week. Students participate in all-school gatherings, build relationships with older students, and learn on a campus that includes the first certified Living Building in Washington State, where environmental stewardship is woven into learning from the very first year.
Literacy at Bertschi grows through experiences that give children something real to say and the tools to say it. Students develop pre-reading foundations through storytelling, retelling, and story sequencing; rich conversation and vocabulary development; songs, rhymes, and sound play; and letter exploration through drawing, dictation, and early writing. Reading and writing are not separate subjects. They live inside everything, emerging naturally from children who are curious, engaged, and full of ideas.
Mathematical thinking at Bertschi develops through hands-on exploration rather than drill and repetition. Students count seeds, sort buttons by size then color then both, build and test structures, measure during investigations, and notice patterns in play. A child figuring out whether a block tower needs one more piece or two is identifying a problem, forming a hypothesis, and testing it. Children develop genuine number sense because they use math repeatedly, in contexts that feel purposeful and are carefully, intentionally building foundational skills.
Design thinking begins in pre-K at Bertschi, not in middle school. Through studio projects and open-ended investigations, children ask questions, imagine solutions, build prototypes, test their ideas, and revise their work. When something does not work, they start over with new information. When a plan fails, they try a different approach. These habits of mind — curiosity, persistence, creative problem-solving, and resilience — begin here and compound across a student's entire educational journey at Bertschi.
Executive function skills are as much a part of the pre-K curriculum as literacy and math. Students practice following multi-step directions, sustaining focus during projects and investigations, working collaboratively with peers, and developing the independence and self-confidence that kindergarten will ask of them. These are not soft skills at Bertschi. They are the foundation of everything that follows, and educators attend to them with the same intentionality as any academic subject.
A Day in the Life of a Pre-K Student
Arrival Early arrivals settle into the library for quiet community time, often alongside Grade 5 volunteer students. At 8:15, the classroom opens and students make their way in, discovering provocations already set out and waiting, each one a quiet invitation to wonder.
Morning The class gathers to share, listen, and make connections, followed by math and literacy exploration. Several children might play with blocks learning the names of shapes and rules of symmetry, while another child may be practicing letter formation at the easel.
Recess and Lunch Students play freely outdoors while educators support social-emotional skill development in the moment. Lunch follows in community.
AfternoonSpecialist classes in drama, music, PE, Spanish, library, and creative movement rotate through the week. Story time and rest time round out the quieter part of the day.
Investigation Children return to ongoing projects, science explorations, or studio work. The educator asks more questions than she answers.
Dismissal and LEAP Some students head home at 2:45. Others join LEAP, Bertschi's after-school program, for snack, creative time, and connection until 6:00 PM.
"The teachers are loving and nurturing, but also they're there to really push them. I think it's going to set them up for really their entire life as a learner." - Bertschi Pre-K Parent
