Quail's Cottage Forest Pre - School & Camp

Quail's Cottage; a forest, farm and folk school. We create and hold a space for children to connect (and re-connect) with nature. Our tiny 3.5 acre farmstead and school were built in 1842. It happens to be our turn now to care for this land and we are choosing to share our homestead with the community. Our little cottage school offers fall, winter and spring and summer sessions. We cater to under school age children during our fall, winter and spring sessions and for the summer we add in our public & private school students as well as children that come up from the big cities. 

We are primarily an outdoor educational enrichment program. Children come out and spend day sessions re-connecting with the outdoor world around them. Our skill bank works to teach farm, folk and forest skills leaving large pockets of unstructured play throughout our day. For indoor learning time, we offer a nontraditional Reggio Emilia, Montessorri and Waldorf inspired learning environment.

We use homemade or rescued, and pre owned books and toys that would otherwise end up in a landill. We find items to give them another chance and one toy at a time. We spend so much time searching out educational resources and books, particularly for our indoor and classroom or setting. Children have access to amazing supplies, materials, and are consistently encouraged to self direct their learning. The Reggio inspired approach suggests there are three “teachers” that are involved with children's learning; the parents, the class teachers, and the environment of the classroom. Parents are considered competent and part of their children's learning experience. 

In a traditional Reggio inspired classroom, there is an atelier (creative expression area), loose parts, a sensory area, building area, writing center, math/numbers center, and a meeting area (in the larger school setting, this is called a piazza. materials used might include; feathers, sea shells, cork, nuts and bolts, pebbles, beans, leaves, sticks, pine cones, bark, flowers. Students explore an idea or concept with materials that have been carefully chosen to ignite thinking. The teacher is first and foremost to be that of a learner alongside the children.

For our farm element we perform daily animal chores together. The children gather duck and chicken eggs, feed and water chickens, ducks, geese, sheep and goats depending on the season. We hatch eggs each year. We work our gardens together from seed all the way to table. Our little owlets, (as the students refer to themselves) learn to prepare homestead meals from everyday from local ingredients raised on our farmstead. We raise Nigerian dwarf goats for their rich fatty milk, our own grass fed lamb and pastured chicken as well as produce. The children are involved with every aspect of the farm. If there's a project to be done they are at our side. 

This past session we built built a no dig garden. The folk element means we focus on teaching traditional folk skills. Traditional skills are an invisible thread to our ancestors. Many of these skills are not taught and handed down as often in our world of modern convenience. Many of the skills we teach and practice involve the homestead. Last session we hatched goslings, ducklings, planted vegetables and made sour dough bread, yogurt, and cheese from goat's milk.