Touchstone Community School’s highly experienced and dedicated teaching staff creates, each year, our deep, rich curriculum that is responsive to children’s interests and uses an inquiry-based, integrated approach emphasizing hands-on activities.  Teachers organize reading, writing, social studies, science, art, math, movement and music activities around core subjects – a thematic approach to learning. A classroom’s exploration may be organized around farms and food, Inuit culture, migratory birds, or the local area watershed; themes are often developed collaboratively between a teacher and her students. This integrated, thematic approach leads children to make meaningful connections as their knowledge of the world grows in breadth, depth, and sophistication.
 
Our teachers give children time during the day to choose to work and play in areas of the curriculum that are of interest to them, and offer time every week for children of all ages to work and play together in activities of their choice about which they feel passionate. They use the world outside the classroom as much as possible to further learning experiences.
 

Books we recommend to all parents:

The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv

The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children by Wendy Mogel (relevant to families of all faiths)

Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages 4 – 14 by Chip Wood and William Crain

Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson

Marguerite Kelly's Family Almanac: The Perfect Companion for Today's Family--a Helpful Guide to Navigating Through the Everyday Issues of Modern Life by Marguerite Kelly

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ by Daniel Goleman