Discovery Center Inc

The Discovery Center has been located on the west side of Ann Arbor since its founding in 1974. Jacki Miller began her dream of providing high-quality early childhood programs at the center s original location on North Maple Road. In 1984, the center moved to its current facility on South Maple Road that was designed and built to house our programs. The new building gave us the opportunity to expand the center s offerings to three full-day preschool classrooms, a half-day preschool program, and a new kindergarten program. In 2003, we renovated and further expanded our facilities with the addition of a new large motor/gym space, basement storage area, larger parking lot, and fourth full-day preschool classroom.
The Discovery Center has been an accredited program through the National Association for the Education of Young Children since 1993. The Miller family continues to own and operate The Discovery Center in collaboration with the administrative and teaching staff of the center.The mission of The Discovery Center is to provide a high-quality early childhood experience for young children. In order to achieve this, The Discovery Center strives to provide an environment where each child is able to approach optimum physical, social, emotional, aesthetic, and intellectual growth. The classroom environment encourages each child to explore "discovery centers" set up by the staff and to participate in a full range of activities occurring throughout the day. The program is enhanced by outside specialists who provide Spanish, music, and story telling enrichment activities.
Our curriculum has been developed by our staff of professional educators to be consistent with the center s philosophy. Some areas of the curriculum stressed by The Discovery Center are dramatic play, creative art, music, science and nature, math activities, stories and books, self-help skills, world awareness, communication skills, creative movement, social/emotional skills, and outdoor play. Within this framework, the staff works toward providing an optimum amount of attention, affection, stimulation, independence, novelty, and choice of activities for each child. We offer both half day and full day preschool programs and young 5 program options.