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Child Care

Welcome to UCSF Child Care & Family Services. We consistently strive to meet the diverse needs of UCSF faculty, student, and staff through our Child Care Centers, Referral Service, Parent Lecture Series, and other alternative resources. We invite you to explore our website, to find the resources that are right for you and your family.

Spotlight

The My Family at UCSF website provides a wealth of information about child, youth, and older adult services.
 Visit the site by clicking on the link in our Quick Links section.

Services

More Information

Pre-School Care

UCSF Child Care Services offers pre-school services at three campus center locations:
University Child Care Center at Laurel Heights
University Child Care Center at Mission Bay
Kirkham Child Development Center on Parnassus

In the pre-school classroom, exploration becomes more formalized. The children learn basic skills they will need for Kindergarten– familiarity of routines, social skills in a group setting, math concepts, language arts, cognitive skills, fine and gross motor skills, and problem-solving within a nurturing environment designed just for them. The children will study interesting topics, and while exploring these topics, they will be exposed to different planned activities and materials that encourage their development. Teachers carefully think out this planning. 

Each teacher in the classroom is the primary caregiver for eight to ten children. The teacher develops activities and provides materials in the classroom that encourages each child’s individual developmental needs in his/her primary group, as well as in all classrooms. Each activity, from playing with playdough and making sand cakes to building a city in the block corner, provides the child with developmental growth opportunities.

Our preschool programs facilitate many areas of growth in young children, and include the following types of activities:
• Writing and computer projects, which promote development of literacy skills, fine motor control, hand-eye coordination, and visual discrimination
• Listening tasks designed to enhance verbal expression, listening, comprehension, and auditory discrimination
• Sensory experiences which allow children to experiment with a range of materials such as clay, sand, flour, mud, salt, water, and other media for artistic expression
• Cognitive and experimental activities that illustrate concepts of cause and effect relationships, sequence, size, position, color, shape, time, quantity, and comparison