Private School in Mill Valley, Marin County CA

Greenwood School, Mill Valley:
Greenwood School in the heart of Mill Valley in Marin County, Northern CA, (10 minutes north of San Francisco) offers a dynamic education that recognizes the developmental phases and fosters the emerging capacities of each child. Enlivened education is filled with vitality, enthusiasm and spirit of imagination. Awakening a love of learning is at the heart of Greenwoods program and school culture. Our rigorously trained teachers are committed to academic excellence and to addressing the emotional, intellectual, and physical needs and capabilities of your children at each crucial stage of their development.

Preschool Curriculum:
Our preschool program serves children ages 2 years 9 months to 4 years 6 months by June 1 prior to desired entry. Parents may choose 2, 3 or 5 day programs based on availability. At this phase of childhood, the young child learns primarily through encounter, imitation, discovery, and play. In our preschool program children are provided with a secure, caring, and structured home-like environment to begin their school years.

Teachers and the classroom community create a safe and meaningful environment where children hear stories, see puppet shows, sing, bake bread, make soup, learn to make beautiful and useful things, explore nature, build houses and structures out of natural materials, and celebrate seasonal festivals. What the children see, touch, hear, and experience is transformed-through their inherent power of imitation-into individual and small-group creative play, which is the work of the young child.

Kindergarten Curriculum:
The Kindergarten program is available for children who are 4 years 6 months by June 1 prior to desired entry. In our Kindergarten program language arts are brought to the children orally through stories, songs, poems, and puppet plays, awakening a love of language and laying a key foundation for literacy. Counting arises naturally out of the manifold tasks and activities of the day.

Sensory integration takes place through joyful movement and physical activities. To become fully engaged with their peers and classroom environment, in an unhurried and unselfconscious way, allows them to grow confidently into their physical bodies and explore social relations. Greenwood's Early Childhood Program stimulates a child's natural interest in his or her environment and fosters powers of concentration, imagination, creative problem solving, and social skills that provide a sure foundation for a lifelong love of learning.

Elementary & Middle School (1st - 8th Grade) Curriculum:
- A rich, experiential, multidisciplinary, academic program, offered in three-to-four-week blocks, that provides a depth and breadth to learning. Subjects: language arts, including reading, writing, poetry, and literature; mathematics; the sciences; history; world languages; and geography.
- Enrichment and integration of academic learning through the visual, musical, movement, and dramatic arts, including singing, drawing, painting, modeling, orchestra, and eurythmy – an art of movement with speech and music.
- Integration of kinetic and sensory foundations for learning through games, physical movement, gardening, woodworking, handwork, and practical arts.
- A one-of-a-kind Nature and Environmental Studies Program — a field studies program where nature becomes the classroom every week — awakening a deep relationship with the earth, and a sure foundation for the natural sciences.