Building the foundation, mastering skills.
Lower and Nursery School
The journey through Nursery and Lower School begins with joyful, guided discovery. In Nursery and Kindergarten, children build a strong academic, social, and emotional foundation. Our expert teachers foster learning through collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, play, and project-based activities.
Nursery and Kindergarten classrooms are organized around structured activity centers, with a gradual introduction to formal learning, ensuring a smooth transition to 1st grade.
Starting in 1st grade, students gain more independence, taking on more responsibility, and deepening their connection to the Town community—whether it’s choosing activities, eating in the cafeteria, or becoming a 4th grade “older buddy.”
Throughout Lower and Nursery School, students evolve from learning individual skills to applying them in meaningful ways. They grow emotionally, develop executive functioning skills, and build the stamina to engage in collaborative, deep learning. Teachers work closely together, continuously refining their approach to best support student growth.
Upon completing 4th grade, students are confident, independent thinkers, ready for leadership in Upper School.
Alison Flannery
Head of Lower and Nursery School
Division Overview and Parent Partnership
For our youngest students in Lower and Nursery School, every part of the program—from academics to the physical environment—is designed to balance intellectual growth with play and hands-on exploration.
As students progress through the division, classes deepen conceptual understanding and emphasize transferable skills that support lifelong learning. Ideas and behaviors are reinforced across subjects, helping students apply knowledge in new contexts.
We are thoughtful about homework and testing expectations to ensure authentic connection to learning at each developmental stage. Reading at home is encouraged at all levels, and by 4th grade, students are confident in managing both classwork and homework. Standardized testing is introduced in 4th grade to help students build familiarity with the format and demonstrate their knowledge and ability.
Small class size, big resources.
Class sizes are small (typically between 16-22 students), with two teachers per class. Classes are held in the gym, music and dance studios, art room, science lab, ecology lab, and 18,000-volume library. Our Nursery and Kindergarten wing includes dedicated play terraces and instructional resources that are designed specifically for young children.
Community connections.
Each class at Town has a “buddy class” from another grade, allowing our youngest students to develop meaningful connections with older children. Older “buddies”—which begins in 4th grade—cheer on their younger buddies as they perform at assemblies, collaborate with them on community service projects, engage in play and shared activities, or just share a quick high-five in the hallways.
Outside the classroom.
Our students often access the vast resources of New York City to learn more about their world. Classes take advantage of connections in the neighborhood and city communities by inviting experts to visit them at Town or by taking field trips to local parks, museums, or local businesses, so they can see—and learn—for themselves. Recent city partnerships and field trips have included Ailey II, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY Historical Society, the African Burial Ground, the MoMath Museum, the Museum of Illustrators, and Ellis Island.
Students in 3rd and 4th grade enjoy overnight trips to a working farm in upstate New York where they gain more independence and decision-making responsibility and expand their social circle. These overnight experiences build upon field trips and city partnerships in the younger grades that focus on developing students’ awareness of our impact on and responsibility for each other and our surroundings.
Growing sense of self.
Beginning in 1st grade, students have increasingly more choice outside their regular class days to explore their interests and affinities. Offerings include: Talent Shows (beginning in 1st grade), Chorus and Dance Club (beginning in 2nd grade), race-based affinity groups (beginning in 3rd grade), and curriculum-based sustainability and community action projects throughout each grade.
Parent-teacher-student partnership.
Parents and teachers are in close touch in a variety of ways. In Nursery and Kindergarten, teachers communicate via weekly Ask Abouts, and monthly newsletters, and parents participate in classroom activities. Beginning in 1st grade, curriculum program updates are provided three times a year.
With literacy specialists, a math specialist, a learning specialist, and a school psychologist in addition to the classroom teachers, students are observed and guided carefully and receive enrichment and support as needed.
Teachers hold formal conferences with parents twice a year to discuss their child’s progress and send home narrative reports in December and June. Students in 3rd and 4th grades join the spring conferences so that they can take more responsibility for their learning and set their own goals with the guidance of their teachers.
Lower and Nursery School Curriculum At-A-Glance
Language Arts
In Nursery and Kindergarten, the Language Arts curriculum emphasizes letter-sound correspondence (phonics), spoken language, fluency of expression, listening skills, and building vocabulary for reading and writing. From Nursery through 2nd grade, students build reading and spelling foundations using Fundations, an evidence-based phonics program. Nursery and Kindergarten students also use Sounds in Motion, which supports phonemic awareness through movement.
As students move through Lower and Nursery School, the Reading program fosters a love of reading while teaching students to think critically, creatively, and reflectively about texts. The Writing program emphasizes both the writing process and the fundamentals of sentence structure, punctuation, and grammar.
Math
In Nursery and Kindergarten, the Math curriculum introduces foundational concepts through games, hands-on activities, and daily routines such as calendar time, snack setup, attendance, and weather data collection. These meaningful, real-world experiences help students build early reasoning and problem-solving skills. Lessons from the TERC Investigations program, along with reasoning routines, support the development of flexible, confident mathematical thinking.
In 1st through 4th grade, students deepen their conceptual understanding by building number sense, recognizing patterns and relationships, and internalizing core operations. They learn to represent mathematical ideas, think logically and abstractly, communicate their reasoning, and calculate with accuracy—all while developing the skills needed for efficient and effective problem solving.
Social Studies
In Nursery and Kindergarten, the Social Studies curriculum focuses on the most familiar and immediate social structures of self, school, and family to teach students how to interpret the world around them. Town’s Identity Curriculum begins during these years, and children are asked to consider questions like, “Who am I?’ “Who are you?” and “Who are we?” Students explore age-appropriate books and activities that support the three identifying traits that children tend to focus on at this age. They include family, gender expression, and race/ethnicity.
In 1st through 4th grade, the Social Studies program centers on community life in different cultures and time periods. Students learn research techniques such as interviewing, observing, categorizing, and report writing. Field trips are important experiences for building observation skills and collecting information.
Science
Our Science curriculum challenges students to pose scientific questions based on their experiences. By using the scientific method of inquiry, they learn to observe, question, predict, investigate, and interpret their findings. In Nursery and Kindergarten, students engage in a classroom project based on their interests which culminates in a presentation to peers, faculty, and families.
In a fully equipped Science lab, 1st through 4th grade students learn how to create and test hypotheses, make careful observations and predictions, take measurements, keep records, and interpret the results.
World Languages
World languages are part of the everyday classroom experience. Exposure to different languages happens at each grade level through morning meeting greetings, and through songs, poetry, and literature.
Spanish is taught in the 1st through 3rd grade homerooms to encourage daily use of the language. Students study families, foods, and neighborhoods and use songs, games, and artwork to learn about Spanish-speaking cultures. In 4th grade, students study French for half of the year and Spanish for the other half before choosing which language they would like to study in Upper School.
Technology
Technology and interactive media are used to support creativity, critical thinking, communication, student research, and documentation. An interactive display board supports class discussions of new concepts and development of fine motor skills. Sequential thinking, the basis for coding, is taught through logic games and physical programming devices.
Smartboards, iPads, and Macbooks are used regularly in 1st through 4th grade classrooms to enhance learning, and a 1:1 student iPad program begins in 4th Grade. 3rd and 4th graders visit the Tech Center regularly to explore new applications, consider their digital footprint and safe researching techniques, and publish their writing compositions.
Arts
In our Arts curriculum, students learn to express ideas through a range of creative mediums. In Dance, they explore movement and storytelling through improvisation, structured dance, and choreography challenges that encourage self-expression and collaboration. In Visual Arts, students are introduced to tools, materials, and techniques through painting, clay sculpture, and other hands-on projects. Beginning in 1st grade, the Global Arts program expands their experience to include drawing, painting, printmaking, weaving, sculpture, ceramics, and digital art. In Music, students build listening, rhythmic, and melodic skills through singing and playing instruments. As they progress, they explore music literacy and composition while continuing to develop their musical expression. Drama is introduced in 4th grade through the Performing Arts class.
Physical Education
Students have Physical Education classes in the Gym, focusing on developing confidence, gross and fine motor skills, sportsmanship, teamwork, perseverance, resilience, and personal and social development. Students develop general movement skills, learn elementary game and sports concepts, and grow their social awareness through group activities.