Our Place

Beautiful spaces, indoors and out, support children’s growth and development.

Indoors

Our charming, light-filled classrooms are thoughtfully planned to support learning and play. Both are essential to development and respected throughout a child’s years at Elmwood.

SENSORY PLAY

Sensory play offers powerful opportunities for children to understand their world. We set up a variety of invitations for sensory play where children explore with playdough, sand, water, materials from nature, shaving cream, textiles, oobleck, bubbles, light, sound, and more.

DRAMATIC PLAY

In our kitchen, the children care for baby dolls, take orders from menus, prepare food, and go on picnics. At other times times in the year, the kitchen may transform into a vet, airport, or grocery store. 

EASEL

Children gather with friends to paint at the easel. They often relay the story behind their paintings to a teacher, who records their words.

LIBRARY

Our classroom libraries include age appropriate books, magazines, and class authored/illustrated books. Children may go there anytime on their own, and are also read to as part of a group each day.

Art

Children make steady use of all our arts and crafts materials as they draw, cut, collage, paste, and experiment. Art experiences are fun, open ended, and process oriented.

BLOCKS

Building is essential to the Elmwood experience and child development. When children build they recreate the world around them and imagine new worlds of their own design. Blocks invite children to experiment with physics, engineering, math, and literacy. They talk about an idea, negotiate, problem solve, and take pride in what they create together. Above all else, they have fun.

Small Group Experiences

Small Groups: Children have time to make their own choices as well as take part in teacher-initiated experiences such as a game, math or literacy center, drawing activity, or investigation related to a thematic unit.

Outdoors

Stimulating the children’s sense of wonder and connection to the outdoors is an integral part of our program.

Elmwood children play outside every day, all year long, weather permitting.  We are fortunate to be located on a summer camp property. The camp layout offers exciting, unique play opportunities. We have an aerial playground, pretend village, soccer field, basketball court, garden, mud kitchen, riding area, climbing structures, and more. It is such fun to be a kid at Elmwood!

GAGA

BASKETBALL

BIKES

CLIMB

Garden

ELMVILLE

Sky Park

SOCCER

Street Games

Back Playground

TESTIMONIALS

This school is excellent. They are very creative and caring - they are play based, and yet most kids excel academically. It's because they sneak the learning in... Jane is the Director and caring but also a "nerd" about early childhood education. She is a fantastic resource and you can tell that she thrives on learning more and providing an excellent start to school. This school is excellent but not fancy. They have their own songs and a very sweet culture that includes everyone. We love it at Elmwood.

I sent both of my girls here. This school is outstanding in every way. The communication between staff and parents is fantastic.

“There are not enough words to thank you for the wonderful gift that Elmwood has been to our family for the last 5+ years. Since our daughter started mid-year in the twos, through our son’s completion of pre-k, we have enjoyed every day, every classroom, and most importantly, every teacher and administrator. You have cared for our children, introduced them to friends and learning, and have been there and supported us through difficult times. We are so grateful to have been part of the Elmwood community and we will certainly miss it in the years to come. Thank you for being such a special and trusted school for our family.”

“Our daughter’s regular updates and imitations of what went on in the day were priceless. We are beyond impressed with the progress she has made and we’re confident she’ll hit the ground running in kindergarten largely because of Elmwood!!”

“Your care and understanding of each individual child is evident. My daughter has grown so much and is sure to blow them away in kindergarten thanks to her time at Elmwood. We thank everyone at Elmwood for all they do!“

“My two children had the most wonderful year at Elmwood. We thank the directors for running such an incredible school…we all feel very blessed to have been a part of it.  Before we joined, “everyone” told us what a great experience Elmwood offers. Despite out high expectations, the directors and the teachers managed to exceed them. We love that the kids had the opportunity to work on a school newspaper, take part in a school play, resolve conflicts with peers in a supervised environment, and develop a true love of learning.

Our children have attended several daycares and schools in the area, and although they were all lovely in their own right, there is simply no comparison to what Elmwood offers. Our time here has us re-evaluating what we want for our kids’ education in the future. We would recommend Elmwood to anyone.”

“My son thanks you for teaching him how to speak Spanish and he loved doing yoga together! I appreciate all your help behind the scenes to make sure Elmwood is an amazing place!”

“My daughter came home every day happy, kinder, and a little more confident. We are so glad we made the last minute decision to send her—something we will always be grateful for. We can’t wait for our son to join next year!”