Every week throughout the school year, young artists at Brooksfield gather  to dance, drum, sing and express themselves. Fall and Spring, we use puppets and masks to turn the Pine Grove & Peace Garden into a magical land where animals play and make friends. When we depart, faerie houses and elf forts dot the landscape! During the Winter months, we stay cozy and create indoor environments for imaginative play, including a tiny trampoline, a loooong cloth river & waterfall, and music from cultures around the world.     

Brooksfield is happy to announce it will now be offering BEFORE and AFTER care to students attending Chesterbrook, Haycock and Kent Gardens Elementary schools!  The afternoon Extended Day program has welcomed students from Chesterbrook Elementary school for the last several years.  With the purchase of Buster, our school bus, we are now excited to expand the program and offer BEFORE and AFTER care to students at Chesterbrook, Haycock and Kent Gardens in grades K through 6th.  Buster will be able to drop off students in the morning to the three schools and pick the students up from Kent Gardens and Haycock.  Chesterbrook students will continue to ride the county bus to Brooksfield in the afternoons.  Extended Day hours will be from 7:30am to 9:00am and 3:30-5:55pm. Brooksfield's Extended Day program is designed to provide a home-like setting with activities that are fun in nature including arts and crafts, cooking, field games,...

Brooksfield School is happy to announce that it will be opening up a two year old toddler program beginning in the Fall 2016-17 school year!  We are really excited to offer another wonderful Montessori program to our families that will incorporate the Montessori curiculum as well as the arts and the outdoors!  The program will consist of a 5 day a week schedule with 9am to 12pm, 9am to 3pm and 7:30am to 5:55pm options. The best part about the program?... the child does NOT have to be potty trained!   If you have a two year old or a rising two year old who you would like to be considered for the program, please contact Sarah Krawchuk, the Admissions Director.  

 Claire and Ceyda's Class started a six-week program that combines both grace and courtesy and mindfulness in the classroom. This program fosters positive outcomes of love, kindness, and empathy through interacting with furry friends and reading books about a dog named Little Dude. The series of books focus on different topics: feelings, empathy, respect, kindness, manners and courage.Over the last few weeks, the children have had the opportunity to read or talk to Brownie, our class guinea pig! Brownie’s cage was set out on a rug and children were able to sit on “The Brownie Rug” and read, talk or just sit beside Brownie. Today, Claire's class had a special guest visit Brooksfield. Coco, Carlie’s dog, came to Brooksfield for the morning! The children took turns reading, walking and playing with Coco. The children practiced using gentle hands, being kind to Coco and showing her respect. As an act of kindness,...

When supporting the biodiversity of our environment, it is easy to overlook the contributions of the smallest creatures that inhabit our gardens.  Insects are one of the most successful living organisms and constitute almost half of all species on earth.  Too often we kill them without realizing that they are actually our allies.  Some help decomposition by eating large amounts of dead leaves and spent organic matter while others eat caterpillars and small snails that attack our vegetables and flowers.  Our bug hotel provides lots of different habitats for different kinds of helpful creatures to live in the summer and hibernate throughout the winter.       Here are some of the materials we used to provide habitats for specific creatures: The hotel structure was made from recycled wooden pallets and off-cuts donated by Home Depot in Merrifield. Hollow stems, such as old bamboo canes, and holes drilled into blocks of...

Join Brooksfield School and LōKL Gourmet on Friday, April 22nd for fun-filled day of Earth Day activities including recycable arts and crafts, music, nature scavenger hunts, pansy planting and more!  LōKL Gourmet will be here to give out free food samplings!  The event runs from 9:30 to 11am and is open to the public!  Hope to see you there!  

  Tuesday was our third “Farm to Table” cooking adventure in the Upper School.  Our chefs for the day prepared lunch for their classmates and teachers.  The menu was our first “international” offering – Coconut beef and vegetable curryCucumber-Mint RaitaChapatti / steamed riceVanilla cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting  All three chefs were very responsible in the cooking area, chopping, measuring, pouring, stirring and blending with care. Working cooperatively and respectfully meant that everyone was permitted to use all of the cooking utensils, even the pointy ones, and take turns working at the stove. The smells wafting up the stairs from the Upper School were fabulous as the curry simmered to perfection.  The squash we used was grown in our summer garden and we harvested the potatoes minutes before we dropped them into the pot!  Mint and onion greens, the first few herbs offered up by the gardens this spring made their...

Young children are full of energy, and are constantly on the move. When they reach the age of attending preschool or elementary school, many parents hear comments from educators that children have a hard time sitting still and doing seatwork. While some may be quick to assign a medical label, consider the possibility that the child may just be a kinesthetic learner. A Montessori school can help assess your child's learning style and adapt to it appropriately. There are 4 main types of learning styles. Reader-writers perform the best with traditional teaching methods, as they truly enjoy getting lost in a book or writing a story. Assign them a packet of worksheets and they are truly in their element. Visual learners need images, graphics, maps, charts, and other visual aids to process information. Auditory learners do best when they can hear and speak about what they are learning. Reading out loud and talking...

The Lower School helps Brooksfield’s birds transition into Spring The children in Julie and Beth’s class have been helping our wild birds as they transition into spring. Birdseed is still needed to help female birds build up strength before nesting season is upon them.  Julie’s class made two different types of feeders:  one that filled egg cartons with a combination of shortening, sunflower butter and bird seed, and the other which coated a small bird house with wild bird seed.  We hung them on the garden loom and watched the birds (and squirrels) feast.  Beth’s class spent the morning cutting up pieces of soft yarn and felt, and mixed them with pillow stuffing and dryer lint.  Then we stuffed wire balls with the soft nesting material and hung them in the trees outside the classroom window.  We’ll watch the birds that make our forest their home, take the material to build...

In art, the color green symbolizes growth and transformation. In nature, it is evident in the way fragile yet strong green stems emerge from the ground in the Spring or how green buds blossom on the trees, signs of more to come, of growth and life. For one three-year-old boy, the color green and its symbolism took on a personal meaning. It was my first year of teaching art at Brooksfield. One of my students, James, a quiet three- year- old, had a favorite color: green. Whenever I offered a colorful selection of oil pastels, he would use a green one to draw a spiny dinosaur. He would paint green mountains. He would choose green yarn for weaving projects. His artwork was usually on green paper. We all knew he loved green. A few weeks into the year, I was teaching a lesson on primary colors. We used white paper for...