Description: The Cottage School teaches children ages 2 through 10, with its unique, well-established education program. The school answers the communities’ calls for a creative, academically outstanding, and affordable alternative to existing private and public schools in Somerset, Hunterdon, and Morris counties.
Our programs integrate traditional subject areas of fine arts, foreign languages, literature, social studies, mathematics, physical education, and the natural world in a cooperative, not competitive, environment. Folktales, rounds, and traditional songs are part of our daily activities. It is academics and art in daily communion.
Children have the opportunity in the morning for uninterrupted free play. They are encouraged to begin their play by simple suggestions from their teachers. They develop their imaginations by building and creating environments, using silks, wool, wooden play structures, handmade dolls, and blocks.
The Cottage School develops a love of learning, free of pressure and sustained by a spirit of discovery at a pace that accompanies the students. The teachers respect and feed the child's innate sense of curiosity, fostering a life-long passion for learning. Children naturally seek information and our school honors children's natural abilities to "learn from the whole.” We immerse the students in the subject of study (not just the foreign languages), allowing the children to process large quantities of interrelated information to interpret, solve, and construct conclusions on their own.
The children are not taught in the scholastic sense we usually attach to the word, but induced by the presentation of suitable material and relevant experiences to discover things for themselves.1
The Cottage School designs its own curriculum and play-based teaching materials, integrating arts, and academics in all the traditional subjects. It uses developmentally appropriate activities to teach without traditional tests, grades, or textbooks. Textbooks can provide facts but are oftentimes shallow, outdated, or one-sided, lacking perspective and varied viewpoints. The teachers create a flexible and dynamic interaction generated by a teacher–student-centered class time.
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