Henry Frost at 307 Pleasant Street, Belmont MA
Our Environment
The Henry Frost Children’s Program is located on what was once Belmont’s 15-acre Henry Frost Farm. Built in 1845, this farm produced crops of beets, tomatoes, celery, and parsley for the town. This Greek revival home with Queen Anne additions makes a perfect venue for our program.
Our farmhouse has been carefully crafted so that our indoor and outdoor learning environments are rich in possibilities and provocations that invite the children to undertake extended exploration and problem solving. We invite you to explore in detail our interior and exterior classroom spaces.
Interior
The Henry Frost Children’s Program Interior Learning Spaces is made up of four sunlit parlor rooms. Each room represents a different early educational philosophy.
The Cherry Blossom Room
This room holds our gigantic wooden blocks collection, building area, and our dramatic play loft system. Emergent curriculum is expanded through imaginary play and children’s sense of wonder. This space also holds our extensive book collection and cozy window seat.
The Copper Beech Room
This classroom has comfortable workspaces for both small group and individual lessons. The shelving is filled with our mathematics materials and our Queen Anne bay window holds our school literacy materials. During community meetings the class gathers around the original farmhouse mahogany fireplace.
The Garden Room
Looking over our school garden, this room showcases three main areas: our art shelf, food preparation kitchen, and our sensory activity station. This room promotes children’s creativity and exploration through the arts.
The Miranda Cutter Room
Named after the wife of Henry Frost, our admissions office is a place for parents and staff to meet comfortably. Our state of the art A/V system allows parents and teachers to review children’s learning through both observational documentation and classroom film documentation on our flat panel LCD screen during parent-teacher conferences. This space also holds our parent lending library.
Exterior
The Copper Beech Porch
The entrance to our school is a carefully crafted porch that gracefully brings our families past the 300-year old Copper Beech Tree. This upper decking area also holds perfect spaces for small groups to gather for lessons or messy projects.
The Outdoor Classroom
Modeled after current research at the Eliot-Pearson Children’s School, our outdoor classroom holds a large cedar climbing structure, a hobbit house made from found wood, our “ocean-front” sandbox, field area, gardening spaces, and our outdoor community blocks. This beautiful collection of blocks, crates, and a wagon allow children to work together to create structures for outdoor play. We believe that outdoor learning environments need to be given the same attention as indoor classrooms. For this reason, our staff plans outdoor curriculum daily.