Our Story

In 2015 Mom/Educator/Author, Gail Foster, approached leaders in the field of early childhood education and linguistics with a vision: Let’s establish a model nursery school specifically designed to tap the emerging neuroscience on the linguistic genius of the young brain. With support from scholars and practitioners, Dr. Foster recruited Columbia affiliated families with toddlers to collaborate in the start-up of an early childhood program that would give their children the gift of multilingualism. This team helped open the first home of the Toddler Language Project on the 18th floor of a residential building in beautiful Morningside Gardens. As part of their commitment to the field, PhD students and language experts have helped document every aspect of the initiative, from the children’s acquisition of a second, third, or fourth language to their social emotional development. Year after year our work is featured at the National Chinese Language Conference. In 2021 we contracted with the NYC Department of Education to open a new site on the Upper West Side that would offer the only Dual Language UPK in Mandarin north of 59th Street. And in 2023 we launched our Outdoor Kindergarten/Grade 1 classroom.