Tucson Community School, Inc

Tucson Community School is a centrally located, preschool and kindergarten in Tucson, Arizona. Since our establishment in 1948, our focus has always been on a child centric development curriculum that emphasizes growth through safe, independent exploration using only positive encouragement.


Large preschool and kindergarten classrooms and spacious outdoor play areas make the possibilities for creativity endless. Inside, children find areas dedicated to important activities such as block building, painting, nature, reading, music and housekeeping.

Each class has its own outside choices include bike riding, climbing, large-block building, gardening area, and wood-working. Throughout, TCS provides a wide supply of quality, safe materials kept clean for play and discovery that allows children to learn at their own pace.

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All activities take place on a closed campus so staff, children, and parents can feel secure. Each classroom has its own bathroom for the child’s convenience and to promote independence in bathroom routines.

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Our preschool and kindergarten playgrounds have evolved over 68 years of children and families playing and building their dreams of independence, resilience, and successful risk-taking. Our mission is to provide a creative learning experience emphasizing outdoor play and family participation in a safe environment which respects each child’s uniqueness and individual learning style.

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The goal of our school’s philosophy and its preschool through kindergarten program is to lay the foundation for a child’s inner strength and resilience, which are necessary to meet the stresses and strains of today’s world. We believe it is the right of every child to be treated as an individual, to learn to share in group responsibility, to satisfy a widening curiosity, and to adapt himself/herself happily according to his/her innate ability and level of emotional maturity.

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With this mission and goal, we must provide a playground which builds and tests strength, which allows for differing abilities, and develops resilience through challenges and problem solving. Our playground allows the opportunity for children to design their play through open-ended equipment. There are quiet places and group areas. Places to test the individual in a peer group, to actively play with a few friends, or quietly commune with nature. Our professional staff interacts and supervises children as they actively engage the playground. As a parent cooperative we have trained parents on site every day assisting children in meeting their self-selected challenges, reinforcing the rules, and promoting safety and respect. The TCS playground is rich in unique, real experiences which are not sanitized by commercial equipment. At TCS children can create, discover, and assess their own play.