Hours - 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
The Early Enrichment Center at Idlewild is located in the heart of midtown Memphis and offers early enrichment for children 6 weeks through age 4, a summer camp program, and a myriad opportunities for parent involvement.
First and foremost, we love children. We believe in the life-shaping impact of earliest brain development and want to provide a model for our city that involves children growing up in diversity from infancy. Believing that vital to early childhood development is “talk, touch, read, play,” EEC will offer children a loving, creative, safe, and stimulating care environment.
Recent studies prove that by age three, babies' brains are 80% developed, so those first years are vital to rearing healthy, resilient, and creative children. The EEC will be based on cutting-edge research on brain development to engender
social-emotional growth, self-regulation, and creativity.
EEC is a center where young children of all backgrounds will develop healthy relationships. Babies come into the world with no judgment, bias, or fear of the world. The EEC is committed to encouraging a community, based on childhood wonder, innocence, and grace. We are excited to welcome children of every race, family configuration, socioeconomic background, and religion.
We know that beginning with a diverse community in the earliest stages will strengthen, not just children but also families and the larger community in which we live.
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Our Curriculum
We are dedicated to serving your child and your family in a warm, nurturing environment. Our community is a place for your child to grow and learn surrounded by love.
Our curriculum focuses on the following pillars:
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Interactive Relationships
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Problem-Solving
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Brain Development
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Resilience - a social-emotional development
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The Creative Curriculum places emphasis on supporting the social-emotional development of children throughout the year. The Creative Curriculum focuses on supporting the whole child because we know that success isn’t only about making progress in math and literacy. By equally focusing on social-emotional development, we can help children to successfully manage their emotions, build relationships with other children, feel safe, and learn classroom rules and routines.
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Research shows an undeniably strong connection between early relationships in school and later behavior and learning.
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The Creative Curriculum makes it easier for teachers to assess children’s social–emotional development accurately and support their growth and competence in this area. The Creative Curriculum provides a guide to assist teachers in supporting social–emotional development in conjunction with providing students with a solid academic foundation. The Creative Curriculum is backed by 40 years of research and innovation in early childhood education.
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Grounded in current child development theory and research, the Creative Curriculum is evidence-based. Its framework for understanding and supporting young children’s learning is based on developmental checkpoints that align with TN Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDs).
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Tuition
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$275/week for 6 weeks through 2 years
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$300/week for 3-year-olds from 7:00am to 3:00pm
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$300/ week for 3-year-olds from 7:00am to 6:00pm
The Application Process
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1. Submit the $50 application fee through our website.
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2. You will receive an application via email to fill out and instructions on who to email it back to.
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3. You will be notified by email of acceptance or placement on the waitlist.
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3. If you receive an acceptance email for placement, you will have 48 hours to notify EEC if you would like to move forward with enrollment. If you choose to accept and enroll your child, you will have one week to pay your deposit (one week's tuition) via the website/app Brightwheel, our childcare management software program. This will officially reserve your child's place and will be applied to your final week's tuition and fees. If your deposit is not received within two weeks, the spot will be reassigned to another child.
Families may opt to “hold” an opening for their child if an opening becomes available prior to their need for care. In order to do so, families are required to pay tuition and fees for each week for a maximum of two weeks. If families opt not to pay to hold the opening, the child will be put back on the end of the wait list.
