First Presbyterian Day School

08/20/2026

Meet the Team Thursday: Ashley Parks, Executive Director

We're excited to kick off our Meet the Team Thursday series by introducing our new Executive Director, Ashley Parks!

Ashley joined First Presbyterian Day School in April after relocating to the Lowcountry from Asheville, North Carolina. She brings a wealth of experience in early childhood education, leadership, and teacher development, along with a deep passion for child-centered learning.

A dedicated lifelong learner, Ashley has completed extensive study in the Reggio Emilia philosophy, with a particular focus on emergent inquiry and the ways children construct knowledge through exploration and discovery. She holds a Master of Arts in Early Childhood Education and a Master's Certificate in Early Childhood Education Emergent Inquiry from East Tennessee State University.

Throughout her career, she has also served as an adjunct instructor at several colleges and universities, helping prepare future educators for the classroom.

Outside of school, Ashley is a proud mom to three children: a chef and nutritionist, an environmentalist and forester, and a college sophomore currently pursuing a degree in Early Childhood Education with plans to become a Child Life Specialist. She also shares life with her partner, Josh, and is a loving bonus mom to his four grown children.

When she's not at school, you'll likely find Ashley and Josh tending to their hobby farm near Asheville — home to cows, goats, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats, and even honeybees!

Ashley is passionate about building relationships and creating meaningful learning experiences for children, families, and educators. Leave a comment below to say hello and welcome her to Hilton Head Island!

08/19/2026

🎶 Music Mondays are here! 🎶

We are excited to introduce Music Mondays with Ms. Green! Each Monday, our classrooms will each have time for intentional music and movement experiences.

We can’t wait to watch our children’s relationships with music grow as they listen, move, explore, and discover together! 🎵

08/14/2026

As we wrap up our first week of the new program year, we’re feeling a little nostalgic looking back at our End-of-Year Ice Cream Social. One of the sweetest moments of the day was recognizing our rising kindergartners with a special blessing and slideshow celebrating a year filled with curiosity, collaboration, growth, and joy.

To our alumni: we hope you had an amazing first week of school! Come visit us soon. We love seeing where your learning journey takes you.

08/08/2026

“How does one measure respect for self and others, flexibility of thought, comfort with ambiguity, passion for learning, interest in collaboration? We don’t have answers but we have held to the idea that there is potential in everyone to be both learner and teacher.”
—Carol Bersani
Innovations in Early Education: The International Reggio Exchange, 16(3), p. 10

08/08/2026

We are ready for our new school year!

08/07/2026

Our staff kicked off our Teacher Work Week with a full day Reggio Reset training focusing on Environments - “the 3rd teacher” - which is part of the components of the Reggio Emilia approach. Since we live in the lowcountry, we finished our day learning about Indigo & its significance to our South Carolina culture & then we made our own indigo dyed scarves. Creating tie dye tee shirts with children & families has been a Day School tradition, so we took it up a notch & we explored using Indigo. We learned how to dye with indigo, each of us created our own design, and then we all celebrated the individuality of each scarf.

08/07/2026

📚✏️ Back-to-school shopping just got a little easier!

South Carolina's Tax-Free Weekend is this weekend, August 7–9, making it the perfect time to stock up on everything your student needs while keeping more money in your pocket.

The best part? Eligible items are tax-free whether you shop in-store or online, with no price limit on qualifying purchases.

Learn more and see the complete list of eligible items at dor.sc.gov/taxfreeweekend.

07/17/2026

07/14/2026

Our program has been inspired by the Reggio Emilia practices for over 20 years. This is a great article that shares more about our perspective on how we approach learning.

Guiding Principles of Emergent Early Childhood Education

07/14/2026

Recently the Sea Star classroom explored mark making on tiles and writing names. Many of our Sea Stars are moving on to Kindergarten and we love seeing their progress with these samples of name writing. This matters because it shows the ongoing development of the fine motor skills of holding a pen and the eye - hand coordination to make marks move into the symbol of letters.