Outdoor Prekindergarten

This unique program offers year-round, hands-on learning at our 150-acre Butler Campus, utilizing our Yurts.

Away from traditional indoor settings, children gain resilience, motivation, and creativity by having the freedom to make their own choices about how they spend their time. This forest-based curriculum develops necessary skills for Kindergarten success.

Essential questions are open-ended, thought-provoking questions that are revisited again and again. Throughout their years in the Early Childhood School, Laurel students explore these essential questions, and we witness their responses to and dialogue around these questions grow in complexity as the students get older.

Early Childhood School Essential Questions

List of 5 items.

Social Emotional

• Who am I?
• How do I recognize and respond to my emotions?
• What does it mean to be part of a community?
• What does it mean to see things from a different point of view?
Mathematics

• How do I use numbers?
• Why do I use numbers?
• Why is it important for some things to happen in order?
Language Arts

• What are the ways that we communicate?
• Why are words important?
• What do I learn from stories and books?
• How can I tell my story?
Science

• What can I observe about the natural world?
• What do I understand about the natural world?
• What do I learn from experimentation?
Social Studies

• What is a community?
• How do I contribute to a community?
• How do we help each other?

List of 2 items.

The Yurts

Our Yurts make the Butler Campus accessible year-round and provide a home base for days with inclement weather. The Yurts' central locations on the Butler Campus create a springboard between nurturing out student's natural curiosities in the forest around us and extending learning opportunities with enriching classroom experiences.
The Forest

In the forest, and away from highly structured indoor curriculum, children make their own choices about how they spend their time and how to manage their own body signals. They become empowered, engaged and highly motivated learners who understand that their acquisition of knowledge is as limitless as the sky above our heads.

Kindergarten Readiness Goals

✓She recognizes many uppercase letters ✓She is beginning to match letters and sounds ✓She recognizes and makes rhymes ✓She can do a simple retell of a story—beginning, middle, end ✓She can write her name using uppercase or lowercase letters

✓She recognizes most numbers 0-10 ✓She recognizes and names basic shapes ✓She can count objects ✓She can recognize simple patterns

✓She can follow simple directions ✓She can hold and use scissors and writing tools ✓She can work or play independently for short periods of time ✓She takes risks and participates in group discussions ✓She can sit still and pay attention when someone else is speaking ✓She shares materials with others ✓She takes turns and cooperates with her peers ✓She is able to name her emotions ✓She shares ideas and feelings with others ✓She recognizes that she has choices in how to respond to situations ✓She manages transitions and/or changes in routine ✓She asks for what she needs in acceptable ways ✓She demonstrates bodily independence (bathroom use, dressing in outdoor gear, etc.)