About Us

Welcome to Casa De Luna. Our goal is to cultivate a strong foundation for your child’s development and future success by providing a safe and stimulating learning environment. We encourage exploration, creativity, and critical thinking. Highly inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach, our curriculum is designed to stimulate and foster the development of the whole child including social-emotional development, cognitive thinking, physical development, language and literacy skills, creativity, and innovation.

Purpose & Philosophy

At Casa De Luna, we believe that the development of your child’s potential is based on a warm and loving environment. The individual needs and interests of the children form the basis for determining the design of the environment and the development of the curriculum. Children are able to choose freely from a wide range of play and learning experiences. We encourage curiosity and inspire the children to explore, investigate, discover, express creativity, and experiment through open-ended, hands-on learning. The fostering of curiosity, problem solving, and creative exploration with quality materials provides a foundation for cognitive development. We also emphasize the development of strong self-esteem, confidence, feelings of independence and competence, and sensitivity to others.

  • Indoor Classroom

    Our indoor classroom encourages exploration, creativity, and socialization. It has a variety of open-ended materials, such as blocks, art supplies, and natural objects, scattered throughout the room accessible for children to use as they wish. The activities in such a classroom are project-based, child-led, and encourage collaboration. The activities may include constructing towers out of blocks, creating murals with paint, designing costumes for dramatic play, and investigating science concepts through experiments. The focus is on the child's interests and abilities, with the teacher acting as a facilitator rather than a director.

  • Outdoor Classroom

    Our outdoor classroom offers each child different experiences. Any part of the curriculum can happen inside or outside. The Art Studio provides a creative environment that fosters curiosity. Children can paint, draw, work with clay, wood, weaving, leather, and so much more. Different mediums of art are introduced throughout the year. Children will have the opportunity to collaborate with their peers to create group art projects. The Play House is a beautiful space for children to use their imagination. Children will have the freedom to pretend play, socialize, problem solve, improve communication skills, and develop their social and emotional skills.

  • Sage's Farm

    Our farm animals provide so many ways for children to learn and grow. Motor skills, social-emotional growth, literacy, math, and science come into play when children have an opportunity to engage with our animals. Our farm staff consists of Luna (our pony), Benito and Red (full size horses), Billy and Basil (our sweet nigerian dwarf goats), 7 beautiful hens, Flash (our small tortoise), and Shelton (our fully grown tortoise). All our animals have years of experience with children and love the attention. We will focus on animal safety and rules the first 2 weeks of opening and new child enrollment. Although our animals have great characters and are gentle… animals can also be unpredictable. Each parent will have to sign a waiver.

Our Curriculum

Our curriculum is designed to nurture the child’s whole development. This includes stimulating their language, cognitive, physical, and creative development, as well as encouraging positive self-esteem in social interaction areas. Our curriculum is designed to meet the individual needs and interests of the whole child, emphasizing the building of autonomy, problem-solving abilities, self-awareness and sensitivity to others through music and movement, language and literacy, math, physical development, creative art, physical and natural science, and dramatic play.

We seek to foster children’s concepts of self-identity and confidence, while learning to build comfortable, empathetic relationships with others. With the support of the teachers, children learn to express their needs and feelings, and to listen to the needs and feelings of others. Children’s social, problem-solving, and conflict resolution skills are developed by fostering critical thinking about what’s fair to themselves and others, and learning to formulate mutually positive solutions.

In addition, we are committed to the importance of messy play in all our learning environments. Messy play (e.g., sand, water, mud, clay molding, play dough, glue, etc.) is an integral part of the children’s learning environment and provides the opportunity for hands-on learning experiences. It stimulates children’s curiosity through exploring, investigating, discovering, and experimenting, and also inspires creative expression by learning about different materials and properties. Messy play also supports children’s sensory development and tactile learning, strengthening their hand eye coordination and motor skills.

Documentation of Learning Activities

Children are active protagonists in their growing process and we want to document it for the parents to see. While your child is a part of our program, we will use a variety of strategies to document your child’s individual learning and classroom activities including: observations, work samples, assessment checklists, and photos of class activities. Individualized information is collected in children’s portfolios for discussion at parent-teacher conferences.

Meet The Team

  • Owner, Bilingual Teacher

    Stephany has her AA degree in early childhood development and is currently in the process of getting her Bachelor’s degree. She’s a member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and has attended many early childhood self-development seminars with an emphasis on the Reggio Emilia approach throughout the years. In the past, she worked for Little Hands Preschool for 8 years which gave her the right tools and experience to work with children during their most important years. She find great joy in being part of the learning process and is a proud homeschool mom to her daughter, Sage.

  • Bilingual Teacher

    Felisa has developed an extremely strong background of coursework and experience in Early Childhood Education including 10+ years of employment with the Fountain Valley School District in the County of Orange, State Preschool program. She is credentialed by the State of California with a Master Teacher Permit and is a member of the local affiliate section of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). She also previously owned and ran Little Hands Preschool in Temescal Valley for 13 years. She regularly attends professional development activities to increase her knowledge of developmentally appropriate teaching practices, so that she may better serve your children.

  • Visual/Graphic Designer, Operations Manager

    Camille is a visual/graphic designer from Los Angeles with a Visual Communications degree from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM). She started her career in the industry as a designer in 2012 and since then, she’s worked with a plethora of entrepreneurs and businesses, both big and small, in a wide range of industries. She developed a variety of design solutions throughout the years which allowed her to work with different skillsets, wear a bunch of different hats, and gave her an extensive set of tools to find success as a designer and the people she works with. If you need any help in the design department, feel free to visit hicamille.com for more info on her services.

    “I feel so honored to be part of the Casa de Luna team and feel lucky that my daughter was one of the first students enrolled to their preschool program when they first opened. Casa de Luna is such a special place and I’m excited for you all to experience their magic as well!” —Camille