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After a busy morning learning how bagels are made at a local bagel shop on Sept. 18, the kindergarteners from College Park Nursery School were ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

Using peanut butter, jelly, cream cheese, carrots, Cheerios and cheese, the students turned the bagels they just learned how to make into "bagel faces."

For kindergarten teacher and school director Joan Sicher, hands-on activities and play are the best ways to learn. Activities such as making bagel faces are a regular occurrence in her classroom.

"Parents here believe that children can learn better through play and fun activities instead of seatwork and testing," she said.

Sicher restarted the school's kindergarten program this year after it was cancelled in 2005 because a teacher could not be found.

The College Park Nursery School is a cooperative parent-teacher learning center, where parents are required to help out in the classroom and attend meetings.

After years of pressure from parents to restart the kindergarten class, Sicher, who already taught a four-year old class, decided she'd teach it herself.

"We were so exited when the kindergarten came back," said Jeana Foley, whose son, Oliver, is in Sicher's class. "We all love Joan and like the environment here."

Sicher also plans on taking the students on field trips including a pumpkin patch, Lake Artemisia and a bank to learn how change is made.

Sicher said she puts a special emphasis on cooking as well.

"Cooking is math, and it's science," she said. "We use it with the ABCs too so the kids are really learning. If you just use the senses to see how to spell a word it really helps."

Foley said she was surprised how well Sicher's philosophies translate to the students' academic performance.

"They were doing far more academically than I thought they would," she said. "They were listening and learning. I was really impressed with how they wanted to learn."

This year's class has 12 students and is a half-day program.

In total, the school, which has been open since 1965, has 72 students.

Sicher said many parents have said they prefer the half-day hours because public school's kindergarten runs too long.

"A lot of them didn't want full days," she said. "Kids are in school for so many years, and it's so academic now."

Sicher said that because so many of this year's parents are working full-time, the kindergarten is the only one of the school's six classes that is not a parent-teacher co-op.

Teaching Assistant Christele Brown said she thinks the school is attractive to parents because they don't overwhelm the students with testing.

"I think the feeling is there is too much testing in public school," Brown said. "Teachers have to cater to the testing before they cater to the kids' needs. Everything is done with the purpose of testing instead of the purpose of teaching. They only learn certain things because it's going to be on the test."