Love of Learning
Nourishing the Sense of Wonder innate in children. Active learners. Independent thinkers. Community members.
Love of Nature
Establishing a Lifelong Connection. Getting back to nature? We never left.
Instilling Kindness
Developing Self-Confidence and Responsibility for Oneself
Contact with Nature
Children derive a strong sense of self and place spending time in nature.
Preserving Childhood
No rush for children to grow up into adults
Preschool
The Village School provides a warm, safe, supportive, nurturing garden for children to grow and become themselves. Teachers are facilitators, gardeners and role models
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Kindergarten
Children are learning friendship making, fine and large motor skills, beginning reading and handwriting, hands-on math with manipulatives, and growing imagination and creativity through play, all rooted in daily experience in nature. Wonder is alive and thriving.
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Grade 1 - 2
Children begin to solidify skills and move freely between the world of imagination and the real world around them. Learning sparks their interest, and their interest guides the direction and depth of their learning. Play and work are indistinguishable.
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Grade 3 - 4
Children begin to separate their imaginary world from the world of reality. One is for play, one is for learning. They value both and transition easily from one to another. Reading is opening big doors to the larger world outside their home and classroom. Nature is their natural home.
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Grade 5 - 6
Taking on an expansive Theme Study for the whole year, such as ancient Greece, children explore the past and present and make connections to their daily lives. Self expression takes many forms, such as writing, painting and creating an original play together.
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The Village School is an independent school for students from preschool through the 6th grade.
Located in rural Royalston, Massachusetts, the Village School serves children from over 20 of the surrounding communities in north central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.
The nature based Village School education focuses on in-depth hands-on academic studies together with kindness and attention to the individual student.
The Village School helps children develop their talents, celebrates their uniqueness, and champions cooperative learning. The school’s structure facilitates each student becoming responsibly independent.
Theme Study weaves a fabric that connects all learning throughout the Village School. In the Kindergarten Theme Study on rocks, children examine and hold rocks, they hunt rocks, they make a rock collection, they read books about rocks, they count rocks, they write their own rock books, they make rock paintings, they sing songs about rocks, they bring rocks from home, they visit a gorge with layers of rocks, they go rock climbing and lots more, touching on all parts of the curriculum: reading, writing, music, art, science, math and phys. ed. Learning is connected, engaging and personal.
I saw a clear difference between the Village School and the public system or even other private schools. Village School children receive an emotional education (my words completely) unavailable elsewhere. This is so important for parents to see but not always easy to describe.
Rick Walton, founder and owner of the Gardner Ale House , alumni parent and current Village School Board member
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