About Walnut Lake Preschool
Considering Walnut Lake Preschool for your child?

Is Your Child...
  • More spirited?
  • More energetic?
  • More sensitive?
  • More thrown by change and transition?

Are You...
  • Exhausted by an amazing, high maintenance child?
  • Feeling unappreciated for the energy, creativity and intensity required to parent your child?
  • Frustrated by your search for a comprehensive program that addresses your child’s strengths and needs as well as your own?

Since 1957, the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute (MPI) has been committed to improving the quality of life in the community by promoting programs for better mental health. Walnut Lake Preschool developed out of the Center for Early Childhood Development as an outreach program of MPI designed to improve the social and emotional life of young children.

Our philosophy is centered on a firm belief in the importance of the growth and development of the individual child. The program is structured to enable each child to learn to make choices, take initiative, develop preferences, and find positive ways of problem solving. To become loving and compassionate with self and others, and learn to express and master feelings in appropriate ways is the intersecting goal between a therapeutic curriculum and any excellent early childhood program.

We engage each child with new materials, experiences, ideas and people at a level appropriate for the preschooler. Activities are devised to enable children to feel competent and secure. We focus on emotional and social development, as well as language development in an atmosphere that is accepting of individual needs and differences.

The therapeutic component of our program makes us highly specialized. We focus on the individual needs of children and ways of developing emergent curriculum to meet their needs, spark their curiosity and encourage growth and development in all areas. This is a curriculum that is attractive and relevant to the child and evolves from the interactions between the teacher and children.

Teachers collaborate with parents, family consultants, clinical staff and each other to create a learning environment that supports creativity and growth in each individual as a whole person. A special feeling is created in the classroom – a warmth, respect and sense of humor touch the interactions between the teachers and children, as well as among the children themselves. Parents are appreciated as knowledgeable about their own child and respected as their child’s first and most influential teachers, advocates and supporters.

Click here for biographies of Walnut Lake Preschool's current directors.


Walnut Lake Preschool
2075 Walnut Lake Road
West Bloomfield, MI 48323
Phone: 248-339-6263
Email Walnut Lake Preschool