sweet Fern Forest Kindergarten
Sweet Fern Forest Kindergarten is The Community School’s (TCS’s) Kindergarten and Pre-K program and serves children ages 4-6 in a nature-based, integrated and multi-age Forest School model. Depending on age and development, students may spend one or more years in the Sweet Ferns before entering the grades at TCS. Children must be at least 4 years of age by September 1, 2024 to apply to the Forest Kindergarten.
Sweet Fern Forest Kindergarten is located on the banks of Babson Creek and in the nearby woodland forests, marsh and fields. We have a yurt classroom as an indoor space for rest time, gear storage, and indoor lessons.
Forest Kindergarten is a widely practiced model in Europe, originating in Scandinavia, where the majority of the learning takes place outdoors in all seasons and in all weather conditions. Children learn in a natural environment with experienced adults who support their self-initiated play, discovery, and inquiry. The first Forest Kindergarten in the U.S. began in 2008, and many more have emerged nationwide over the past decade.
While the Forest School model is inherently Place-based and shares many parallels with the TCS model for the grades, we believe that the practices of Forest Kindergarten best meet young students in establishing a strong social-emotional foundation and physical development in gross and fine motor skills. The curriculum presents opportunities for inquiry, wonder, problem solving, and inspires a genuine love for learning that will last long past student’s days as a Sweet Fern. With this foundation, the academics follow. As traditional Kindergartens become more standards-based and rigorous, the Forest Kindergarten model allows for developmentally appropriate play and exploration that is wonder-filled and inquiry-based, all while developing a strong sense of self, place and community.
Sweet Fern Teachers:
Kreg McCune: As a parent who has watched this community grow, adapt and thrive over the past four years of my children’s time at The Community School, I am excited to share that I will be joining the staff as a part-time teacher with the new Forest-K Program this fall. Participating in a program like this has been an interest and a dream of mine for over a decade and I am so pleased to take part in launching the Forest-K at TCS.
Forest programs promote a culture of wonder, resilience, imagination and connection to the natural world that is well suited to the early education and social-emotional needs of young children. As both an educator and parent, I’m a strong advocate for providing our youngest community members with the opportunity to learn through play and exploration while immersed in nature.
My background in education includes over fifteen years of experience in K-8 general and special education environments with six of those years spent exclusively in the kindergarten classroom. I am a Maine certified Early Childhood Special Education Teacher and hold an undergraduate degree in Biology and a Master’s in Early Childhood Education. In addition to these experiences in teaching I spent sixteen summers living and working at a remote wilderness camp in Northern Ontario and have spent the last eight years working as a ceramic artist at my home studio in Seal Cove. I have a deep connection with the natural world and our place as creative individuals within it that I hope to bring wholeheartedly to the TCS community. I look forward to meeting our new families in the months to come.
Jesse Snider: I found myself drawn to TCS the moment I visited the Woodland classroom for a school project. The emphasis on Place-based learning and connection to the community and environment speaks to me on many levels, and I am grateful for the opportunity to expand this vision with the Forest Kindergarten program. Growing up in Belfast, Maine and attending Ashwood Waldorf School in Rockport, I have a deep appreciation for outdoor experiences and what they have to offer to growing bodies and minds. I consider it the greatest privilege of my life to have attended a K-8 school that realized the importance of learning about the world through engaging with the outdoors, and I am eager to cultivate this mindset with the teachers and students in the Sweet Fern class.
I came to the TCS community directly from College of the Atlantic, where I studied child development, experiential education, and integrated methods of teaching reading and writing. Before attending COA I studied adventure education and outdoor therapy at Green Mountain College in Vermont. My own interest in the outdoors comes from a variety of life experiences, from searching for crabs and starfish along Maine's rocky beaches to co-teaching the Farm to School program at Conners Emerson and working on local farms to produce food for my community. While the activities change, the joy and wonder I have derived from these outdoor experiences remains the same. It is this joy and wonder that I hope to bring to the future students of both the Sweet Fern class and the wider TCS community.
Jasmine Smith: Teaching in the field and experiencing the wonders of the natural world with young people is one of my greatest joys in life and I am delighted to share my mornings with the Sweet Ferns, in addition to my role as school director. This dual role has allowed me to be directly engaged with the foundation of our progression at TCS and build meaningful relationships with families at the start of their TCS journey.
Before founding The Community School in 2014, I taught in a variety of public and private school settings across the grades and across the country. I have led multi-week youth wilderness trips, been deeply inspired by the beauty of teahcing at a Waldorf school, and I directed COA’s Summer Field Studies program for a number of years. My favorite classrooms include mountaintops, canoes, peat bogs, river banks, gardens and the intertidal. Wherever the “classroom” may be, I am committed to creating a space where children develop an inherent love for learning, themselves, their community, and a lasting connection to place. I believe that mindful communication is crucial for building understanding and empathy between humans and social-emotional learning is included in my defication of “academics,” as is climbing trees, building a fire, noticing how the light changes with the seasons, and cannonballing into puddles.