Discovery Schoolhouse provides a warm, nurturing, supportive, educational, and enjoyable experience for children from 15 months through kindergarten, all year round, all day long.
For Preschool & Toddlers, please scroll down.
Kindergarten – Enrolling now for the fall
- Always in-person and never remote – guaranteed.
- Always convenient – Kindergarten runs for a actual full days 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM, Monday-Friday, with extended day options 7:00 AM-6:00 PM.
- Always a small group – 10 children maximum.
- Always flexible – No strict cutoff age. No entrance “interview.” All children welcome. The program is hands-on and developmentally appropriate.
- Always affordable. Vouchers accepted. It’s who we are and what we do.
- Kindergarten follows the Milton Public School calendar for breaks and vacations, but ask about our vacation coverage.
- We are a nature and play-based kindergarten program that follows the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks where children of diverse learning styles and temperaments can learn at their own pace through exploration, creativity, and discovery.
- Wait! We almost forgot to mention…yoga, music, ukulele, chickens (yes, chickens!), vermiculture, sign language, art, karate, weaving, Japanese, gardening, and nature hikes. Oh, and also…reading, writing, math, telling time, counting money, science, geography, weather, & measuring!
Click here to a contact form and we’ll be in touch soon.
Schedules, Tuition, and Admission Policies
Preschool & Toddlers
Our toddler and preschool programs run 7:00 in the morning until 6:00 in the evening the entire calendar year, with a variety of scheduling options available. They do not follow a school year calendar, and can children enroll at any time, all year round, but there’s always a waiting list for September – don’t miss out! Enroll early!
Toddler info (15 months – 33 months)
We always have toddler and preschool children enrolled for a variety of the available schedules, with some children attending “full time,” five days a week, 7:00 to 6:00, and other children attending only 2 or 3 days 8:00 – 3:00 (and everything in between). Many parents send their children to Discovery Schoolhouse so that their children will have a positive social experience with other children, learn how to be friends, and learn about the world. We want Discovery Schoolhouse to be just right for every child who enrolls!
Schedules, Tuition, and Admission Policies
Real, old fashioned preschool…
The program uses an interactive, child-centered, developmentally appropriate approach which assumes that children learn through active participation and discovery (which is just our way of saying that we are a very “play-based” program). The curriculum emphasizes child-initiated activities, fostering independence, social skills, respecting cultural diversity, creativity, and individuality.
We emphasis children’s social and emotional learning and development – learning to be friends; learning to get along in a group; working with others and working on your own; feeling confident and competent; using appropriate words to express feelings, needs, and thoughts; caring for others, the classroom, and the environment; conflict resolution; taking turns; and being helpful.
We love traditional “academic” skills too, but we don’t build the program around them. We are often thinking about and talking about literacy, counting, numbers, letters, colors, reading, and learning about the world, but we don’t worry about them! We know that all young children are interested in these things too, all on their own. We love doing arts and crafts, exploring the environment, learning about science and nature, and reading and writing – we just like to keep in mind while we’re doing it that young children are learning how to be people first. We like to see children exploring the world at their own pace and in their own time. We like to see them learning to do things on their own, and we like to see them helping and supporting each other.
At Discovery Schoolhouse each child is respected as an individual and given maximum support for learning and development. The curriculum is designed to nurture the development of the whole child, addressing cognitive, intellectual, social, emotional, ethical, and physical needs.
The curriculum and classrooms at Discovery Schoolhouse are designed so that children have a wide variety of appropriate activities available to them. Teachers are active facilitators of children’s learning, constantly adjusting the curriculum to meet the needs and interests of each child. Teachers act as guides, helping children make choices, work out and discuss conflicts with their friends, answering and asking questions, modeling appropriate behavior, and monitoring children’s progress.
A basic philosophy of the school is that children learn best about the real world by using genuine materials and equipment whenever possible. Toy tools, make-believe ovens, and plastic shovels simply do not function as they should, and the child who uses only a plastic hammer at a pretend workbench only learns that hammers do not work, cannot hurt your finger, and do not need to be used carefully. So, at Discovery Schoolhouse children use real tools and equipment (whenever possible) such as metal shovels, rakes, trowels, and hoes for gardening; real kitchen utensils such as potato peelers, apple corers, food mills, and metal tableware for cooking; and real carpentry tools such as hammers, saws, drills, screwdrivers, and files for woodworking. Of course, children are always carefully supervised, and teachers work with children so that they can learn the proper and safe handling of appropriate tools and materials.
Interested in finding out more about having your child attend Discovery Schoolhouse? Contact us and schedule a tour of the school.
See our Questions & Answers page if you have questions, or contact us for more info.