Program Overview

Every year, young children are welcomed as "honored guests" into Bing's light-filled classrooms that open wide to a sprawling terrain of hills, rabbit hutches, fruit trees, and play structures. 

At Bing, children are encouraged and empowered to take learning into their own hands—literally. Blocks, paint, sand, water, and clay are not only vehicles of their unbridled imaginations, but also tools through which they shape and understand their worlds.

Children, ages two to five years, are enrolled in the school. The school operates on the Stanford academic calendar. Children are enrolled for half day morning or afternoon sessions of 3-1/2 hours for the nursery school program or 2-1/2 hours for the two-year-old program. Bing Nursery School offers a needs-based scholarship program available to all families after they are accepted into the program, as well as a discounted tuition rate for Stanford affiliated families. The school employs a teaching staff of 40 early childhood educators. 

Bing Nursery School programs are designed, and enrollment decisions are made to fulfill the research and training needs of the University, the group needs of each classroom, and parent's needs for their children. Priority may be given to a child of a specific age and gender due to programmatic or research needs. Occasionally, other research needs, classroom needs, or individual development needs may add additional criteria to the group composition. Bing Nursery School does not discriminate regardless of race, color, national origin, gender, religion, disability, sexual orientation, marital or family status, political beliefs, or parental status.

Nursery: for 3-5 year-olds

The Nursery School Program is designed to encourage a balance of child initiated and teacher facilitated activities. It offers children a variety of choices provided within a carefully prepared indoor and outdoor environment. Emphasis is on learning through play in an environment planned to encourage discovery, independence and social interaction.

In order to develop self-esteem and social competence, children are encouraged to help themselves, take initiative, and become increasingly independent. The environment includes art, dramatic play, unit blocks, manipulatives, language arts, books, music, water and sand play, building of large structures, gardening, running, climbing, animal care, and a variety of large and small motor activities. Our goal is to encourage each child's natural curiosity and interest in learning. We feel it is important for children to actively participate in the learning process, and therefore provide many opportunities for learning by doing, for both indirect and direct acquisition of new knowledge and skills.

For 2 year-olds

The Two-Year-Old Program encourages the growth of independence and social awareness, sensory exploration, the development of physical skills and language development.

Children play in a planned indoor and outdoor environment designed to provide a variety of materials to explore. Activities include blocks, clay or play dough, easel painting, sand, water, and large and small motor activities. Once a child is comfortable in the group environment, seeking out teachers for support and developing increased peer social skills, the teachers and parents may plan for parent-child separation on an individualized basis.