Your NYC Neighbor – is a way of introducing New Yorkers to a rich community of savvy parents. New York is a diverse City bustling with all kinds of families and personalities. We also love to grab tips and recommendations from moms and dads in certain neighborhoods and throughout the 5 Boroughs, and especially people who have created a product, service or site that helps new parents or appeals to children. Meet Daniel Koffler at
Explore + Discover.
Daniel – tell us about yourself
I grew up in Great Neck, NY, just outside of the city. Went to college in DC at George Washington University, where I met my wife. I’ve been working with my father (and brother) since I graduated from college (roughly 10 years ago)—I have the greatest job in the world: we are school operators, and as such, get to have a direct impact on countless families and individuals every day. It’s a big responsibility, and we take it very seriously—but have a lot of fun doing it. I am married and have an amazing daughter (my wife is amazing too!).
Tell us about your latest venture?
Our latest venture is an early childhood program called
Explore + Discover(www.explorediscover.net). The premise behind the program is that while there is (and has been) quite a bit of attention to the preschool years in the private sector in NYC for a long time—and recently, a big push to open Pre K programming to all NYC students—there hasn’t been much attention paid to early childhood opportunities for families and children before that point in the development cycle.
Fast Facts
Location: 444 2nd Ave, NY NY
Center size: 80 students
Student ages: 3m-23 months
Curriculum: Arts Oriented
Admissions: Rolling
Classes start: Sept 8
When we started looking around to see if our hunch was indeed a reality, it turned out we were indeed correct. That’s not to say there isn’t programming available for the 0m-3yr population—there is, and some of it is pretty good. Our approach is a bit different, in that we are taking into consideration the science behind brain development in the early childhood population and using that as a foundation for the establishment of a safe, nurturing and developmentally-appropriate setting for infants and toddlers to realize their potential, and be well-prepared both academically and socially-emotionally, for the next stage(s) of life and development.
You know, when you think about it, isn’t what I’m describing what everyone would want—and expect from a professionally organized program—for their child? I think the primary difference is that we are DOING it! To our knowledge, and we did a good bit of research locally, nationally and internationally, there aren’t many programs that are built to the specifications of this population.
Generally what you’ll find are thoughtful and highly-regarded nursery age programs who may have created a section for infants and toddlers as an accommodation to current families with younger children/siblings. There are also larger scale daycare centers that cater to large corporations as an accommodation to employees. Both of these scenarios can offer many benefits, and I don’t mean to use the word ‘accommodating’ in a negative or dismissive manner!
Rather, we think that infants and toddlers are a very different population than nursery-age children, and deserve their own environment and everything that goes into creating that. To name a few of the thoughtful things that our leadership team established in creating this program, contrary to the traditional 0-12, 13-24 month model that is very prevalent in a daycare/infant & toddler setting, we have created another layer of division in there, so our model looks like this: 3-9 months, 10-17 months, and 18-24 months. This was a decision based on typical/developmentally appropriate mobility of the children in these age groups, and when you think about it, makes a lot of sense!
We are also doing a number of things to keep parents very much involved in the process, and one thing that sticks out to me is a Nursing Room that we’ve created to allow nursing mothers to be with their children or simply be on-site during the day without having to consider how to address this very real and practical aspect of early childhood!
There is so much more that I could go into—my recommendation for anyone interested in learning more about those nuances, though, is to give us a call or pay us a visit!
Can I enroll my baby now? Mid-term?
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