Elyssa Nelson, executive director of the Child Educational Center, visits preschoolers playing with Legos at the CEC.

Child Education Center turns 25

The laws of modern science say that perpetual motion is impossible, but you wouldn’t know it to look at the Child Educational Center play yard one recent morning. There were kids flying on swings. Digging in a sandbox. Climbing the monkey bars. Riding trikes and scooters. Plucking a guitar and banging a toy drum. Catapulting across a tumbling mat.

This glimpse of kids at play probably demonstrates best the core philosophy of the center, now celebrating its 25th year of operation.

“We are trying to preserve this period of childhood that is at risk,” says executive director Elyssa Nelson, who takes a visitor on a tour of the preschool program. Despite the outside world’s preoccupation with formal academics, young children mostly need the chance to play with other kids and use their five senses to run and climb to their heart’s desire. “They need to be challenged intellectually and physically in a meaningful play-oriented context,” says Nelson, who has worked at the center since its inception.
Established with Caltech funding in 1979 at the request of Jet Propulsion Laboratory employees, the preschool program has grown from four rooms serving 50 children to 10 classrooms serving 180 children. As the program has grown, so have its facilities in a building at 140 Foothill Boulevard in La Cañada Flintridge, near JPL.

The center emphasizes playtime and fun in an environment that helps children build a sense of social and emotional security. At the same time, they explore stimulating cognitive activities. A critical factor is minimizing staff turnover so that children have continuity of care, Nelson says. “The social and emotional components of development are critical,” she says. “Within that, there is a need for predictable routines and an overall environment that promotes freedom of discovery and the joy of learning.

“Children have a wonderful opportunity to learn from one another. The ability to navigate the social world is so important in helping them learn how to function in a group, how to be a leader, how to negotiate, how to ask for what they need and want.”

The center’s school-age program serves 450 children in five locations both after school and during the summer, including one at Caltech.

Guided by a board of trustees, the CEC plans to collaborate more in the future with the Children’s Center at Caltech to provide integrated services to the campus and JPL communities. Another goal is to increase the number of Caltech community families, which currently represent about 5 percent of the total.

“I cannot think of a better place for our daughter,” says David Levy, director of Caltech’s Financial Aid Office. “They’ve challenged her socially, emotionally, and intellectually in a very seamless manner.”

His daughter, Zoë, now in kindergarten, started out in the center’s infant room when she was eight weeks old. Zoë continues to visit the teacher who took care of her when she was a baby, he says.

“We wanted something that was going to stimulate her socially as well as intellectually,” says his wife, Maureen McRae Levy, who directs the financial aid office at Occidental College. “What sold us most was the loving and caring staff.” Another plus in her book is that the center works hard to celebrate cultural diversity and leaves it to families to celebrate major holidays as they see fit at home, so that kids don’t feel left out or “different.”

Another fan is Eloisa Imel, who manages Postdoctoral Scholars/Visitors Services in Human Resources. She and her husband, David Imel, who also works on campus, have developed strong relationships both with the center’s teachers and the parents of their two children’s classmates. She is equally impressed by the deluxe outdoor space that features a large play yard, and a garden with green grass and shade.

“If you choose to work as I do and have your children in day care, the combination of the dedicated teachers and the facilities make it easy to decide,“ she says.
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