Chappell Child Development Centers - About Us
Chappell History

The Chappell School was founded in 1958 by LaDauskie Harward Chappell as a kindergarten. The Chappell School expanded from infant care through Grade 9. The maximum number of students served was 700 (seven hundred) in the early 1970s. Chappell Child Development Centers During the years in which grades were in place, accreditation by The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools was acquired and maintained.

Upon the death of Mrs. Chappell in 1979, her daughter, Katheryne Chappell Drennon, became President and Chief Executive Officer of the corporation. She devoted all efforts to the creation and maintenance of state-of-the-art child development centers which included well planned expansion focusing on the acquisition of management contracts and existing centers as well as the design and construction of new centers. One of these child development centers has received national acclaim; Chappell Deerwood, built in 1984 was the first privately owned, free standing, non-subsidized child development center in an Office Park setting in the United States.

Katheryne Chappell Drennon was commissioned by the Washington, D.C. based National Association of Industrial Office Parks to write Child Care in Business Parks: A Guide for Developers in 1988.

In 1987, Chappell was awarded its first corporate contract; an exclusive Provider Contract from a Johnson & Johnson Company, Vistakon. In 1990, Chappell was awarded a Provider Contract from two AT&T corporations. Chappell has received numerous major grants from these and other Fortune 500 companies, including Blue Cross/Blue Shield and IBM.

In 1995 Chappell received its first N.A.E.Y.C. accreditation at the FAA Air Route Traffic Control Center in Hilliard, Florida.

In 1995 Katheryne Chappell Drennon was featured by the Jacksonville Business Journal as the largest woman-owned business in the Jacksonville area.

In 1996 Chappell was rated by the Jacksonville Business Journal as the largest child care center(s) in the Jacksonville area.

In 1998 Katheryne Chappell Drennon was featured by Florida Trend as the third largest woman-owned business in the state of Florida.

Katheryne Chappell Drennon’s daughter, Lynné Byrd Harris, who is on staff, creates the third generational continuum.

All the Chappell Child Development Centers enjoy the very finest reputation and highest community regard.



Chappell Curricular Philosophy

Chappell Child Development Center's curriculum provides each child with active experiences which are extended through language and non-verbal representation. The curriculum represents continuous learning opportunities using a multi-sensory developmental approach in which all activities are appropriate to the development of the TOTAL child. On staff is a full-time Curriculum Coordinator whose responsibilities include coordinating all aspects of the curriculum and to train staff members.

Chappell Child Development Centers The concepts and skills listed in the Developmental Plans were designed in a consistent manner which will meet each child's developmental needs and interests for his/her first five years. Only developmentally appropriate materials, equipment and activities are used to project these concepts and skills.

Our curriculum reflects the developmental approach to teaching which supports the idea that children learn best when they are actively involved in the learning process. Children must first learn at the concrete level in order for concepts to be internalized. Emphasis is on simple beginnings in the form of hands-on activities; manipulating, creating, building, exploring, actively doing! Ideas and concepts which are on the abstract level will follow quite easily for the child who has first explored concrete experiences. Activities are presented in a fun and interesting manner which invite the children to actively involve themselves in learning and to experience success! Our methods reflect an age-appropriate and natural style which result in greater opportunities for success, as well as developing positive attitudes towards the overall and continual learning process.

KEY EXPERIENCES IN ACTIVE LEARNING:

  • Exploring actively with all the senses
  • Discovering relations through direct experience
  • Manipulating, transforming and combining materials
  • Choosing materials, activities, purposes
  • Acquiring skills with tools and equipment
  • Using the large muscles
  • Taking care of one's own needs

KEY EXPERIENCES IN USING LANGUAGE:

  • Talking with others about personally meaningful experiences
  • Describing objects, events and relations
  • Expressing feelings in words
  • Having one's own spoken language written down by an adult and read back
  • Having fun with language: rhyming, making up stories, and listening to poems and stories

KEY EXPERIENCES IN REPRESENTING EXPERIENCES AND IDEAS:

  • Recognizing objects by sound, touch, taste, and smell
  • Imitating actions
  • Relating pictures, photographs, and models to real places and things
  • Role playing and pretending
  • Making models out of clay and blocks, etc.
  • Drawing and painting

KEY EXPERIENCES IN DEVELOPING LOGICAL REASONING:

Classification

  • Investigating and labeling the attributes of things
  • Noticing and describing how things are the same and how they are different
  • Sorting and matching
  • Using and describing something in several different ways
  • Describing what characteristics something does NOT possess or what class it does NOT belong to
  • Holding more than one attribute in mind at a time (Example: Can you find something that is red and made of wood?)
  • Distinguishing between "some" and "all"

Seriation

  • Comparing: Which one is bigger/smaller, heavier/lighter, rougher/smoother, louder/softer, harder/softer, longer/shorter, taller/shorter, wider/narrower, sharper/duller, darker/lighter, etc.
  • Arranging several things in order along some dimension and describing the relations (the longest one, the shortest one, etc.)

Number Concepts

  • Comparing number and amount: more/less, same amount; more/fewer, same number
  • Comparing the number of items in two sets by matching them in one-to one correspondence (Example: are there as many cookies as there are children?)
  • Enumerating (counting) objects, as well as counting by rote

KEY EXPERIENCES IN UNDERSTANDING TIME AND SPACE:

Spatial Relations

  • Fitting things together and taking them apart
  • Rearranging a set of objects or one object in space (folding, twisting, stretching, stacking, tying) and observing the spatial transformations
  • Observing things and places from different spatial viewpoints
  • Experiencing and describing the positions of things in relation to each other (e.g., in the middle, on the side of; on, off, on top of, over, above)
  • Experiencing and describing the direction of movement of things and people (to, from, into, out of, toward, away from)
  • Experiencing and describing relative distances among things and locations (close, near, far, next to, apart, together)
  • Experiencing and representing one's own body: how it is structured, what various body parts can do
  • Learning to locate things in the classroom, school, and neighborhood
  • Interpreting representations of spatial relations in drawings and pictures
  • Distinguishing and describing shapes

Time

  • Planning and completing what one has planned
  • Describing and representing past events
  • Anticipating future events verbally and by making appropriate preparations
  • Starting and stopping an action on signal
  • Noticing, describing, and representing the order of events
  • Experiencing and describing different rates of movement
  • Using conventional time units when talking about past and future events (morning, yesterday, hour, etc.)
  • Comparing time periods (short, long; new, old; young, old; a little while, a long time)
  • Observing that clocks and calendars are used to mark the passage of time
  • Observing seasonal changes

 

Early Childhood Program Goals

Each of Chappell's individual early childhood programs establishes its own goals for children as the result of a consensual process. Those goals address all domains - emotional, social, cognitive, and physical - and attend to the development of desirable attitudes and dispositions, skills and processes, knowledge and understanding.

Our teachers assist children to:

  • Develop a positive self-concept and attitude toward learning, self-control, and a sense of belonging
  • Develop curiosity about the world, confidence as a learner, creativity and imagination, and personal initiative
  • Develop relationships of mutual trust and respect with adults and peers, understand perspectives of other people, and negotiate and apply rules of group living
  • Respect social, individual and cultural diversity
  • Know about the community and social roles
  • Use language to communicate effectively and to facilitate thinking and learning
  • Become literate individuals who gain satisfaction as well as information from reading and writing
  • Represent ideas and feelings through pretend play, drama, dance and movement, music, art and construction
  • Think critically, reason, and solve problems
  • Construct understanding of relationships among objects, people, and events such as classifying, ordering, number, space, and time
  • Construct knowledge of the physical world, manipulate objects for desired effects, and understand cause and effect relationships
  • Acquire knowledge of and appreciation for the fine arts, humanities, and sciences
  • Become competent in management of their bodies and acquire basic physical skills, both gross motor and fine motor
  • Gain knowledge about the care of their bodies and maintain a desirable level of health and fitness