Acorn School offers an exceptional mixed age nursery/kindergarten program designed for two to six-year olds. In addition, we offer summer camp (VIDEO SHOWING) and unique parent-child classes for both infants to three-year olds.
Here, we cultivate a space for intelligent play, allowing the children to engage with the physical world and each other. This is the true work of childhood, the essential basis for critical thinking, problem solving, and social interaction. In our warm, home-like atmosphere, the children are guarded from sensory overload (so ubiquitous in our culture) that can disrupt and even arrest this fundamental activity from finding expression. Journeying through the year we honor the seasons and celebrate festivals. The daily rhythm balances time spent indoors and out, restful times with active, and individual with group activities. This provides a nurturing and sustaining creative space, fostering self-confidence, physical health, and social intuition.
Experiential tasks, great and small, build the foundation for cognitive learning. With song and story, literacy and linguistic capacity are strengthened, along with a sense of the beauty and expressiveness of language. Counting games and rhyme provide a solid basis for memory and mathematical skills. Concentration, small-muscle development, and hand-eye coordination are all skills significantly promoted through tasks such as baking, braiding, finger crocheting, sewing, modeling with beeswax, and watercolor painting. All these elements work together, creating not only a superior foundation for elementary school learning, but also a basis in areas such as artistic ability, ethical values, social awareness, resilience, and health.
