Westminster Nursery School 1951 – 2021
Celebrating Young Children
Westminster Nursery School provides a loving and Christian atmosphere where children can grow and learn. We have been proudly serving our community as a non-profit preschool program for 70 years. Our school is licensed by the Department of Children and Family Services of the State of New Jersey. People travel from as far as Manahawkin, Brick, and Manchester just to have their children attend our programs. Each year we warmly welcome both new and alumni families to our school family.
The school is housed in the renovated and expanded education wing of the Presbyterian Church of Toms River located at Hooper Avenue and Chestnut Street. The Westminster Nursery School Board of Directors is comprised of five church members plus the director of the school. This board makes decisions regarding policy, hiring, and budgeting as well as offers support to the school in various other ways. Our full time director, Mrs. Michele Zaragoza, has been on staff for over 25 years and is on the premises at all times.
Westminster’s staff and school meet the State of New Jersey DCF requirements for licensing, maintaining a minimum of 20 hours of professional development and continuing education courses each school year. The School Board has, however, established higher educational certifications for our teachers than those required by state licensing for preschools. Our dedicated staff of teachers, assistants and office personnel are all CPR and First Aid certified. We are also rated 4 Stars by Grow New Jersey Kids. GNJK is a sponsored initiative to raise the quality of child care and early learning throughout the state of New Jersey.
Programs
Westminster believes it is important to give children opportunities to express ideas freely and originality in their work, to provide a flexible environment without inhibiting spontaneity, and to continuously stimulate children to approach problems and situations with a searching and endless curiosity.
Both teacher guided and unstructured learning experiences are the foundation of a sound early childhood program. Westminster’s programs embrace the opportunity to build strong foundational skills that support quality interactions among teachers and children. Guided freedom allows for testing and trying different approaches to situations with the comfort of knowing that positive guidance from the teacher keeps the experimenting within the realm of safe, creative learning.