Battery Park Montessori-A Green Ivy School

Battery Park Montessori-A Green Ivy School 

As the spring approaches, our visits to new and upcoming schools around the city continues. Recently, we were able to visit a new pre-school that just opened in the fall of 2013 located on South End Ave. in Battery Park. The park is located right next to the Hudson River with views of the Statue of Liberty. The neighborhood has experienced a recent boom in the amount of families with young children, and spots have been filling up fast. Children ages 2-6 years old are welcome and tuition runs from $9,000 to $27,000 depending on if they are attending a whole or half-day program. 

The montessori currently has five classes with about ten students each, and it looks like it's going to stay that way for now. The founder and director, Jennifer Jones, Ph.D. stated, "Montessori is healthy for children, and a child-led experience is the best way a child can learn." Students can experience a variety of activities from music to yoga in their spacious gym area. There is also an after school program that offers a series of workshops from a broad array of interests including fencing, puppetry, dance and life skills that are open to both children and parents. 

Battery Park Montessori is the first school to open among a series, as a part of the "Green Ivy" schools being developed by the founder. One of the schools that has been on the spotlight is the Pine Street School, planned to open this upcoming fall. The school will be a K-8 program focused on having an IB curriculum and also offering a bilingual immersion program in Spanish. As the director noted, one way in which the Pine Street School will stand out is in its core identity in the field experience it will offer to its students. The students will spend about half the time outside of the school in observing and engaging with the world around them and learn what's going on in their neighborhoods. Her emphasis was that "The school is not the only place for learning."

To learn more about the Battery Park Montessori or Green Ivy Schools, please visit their website at  http://www.bpmpreschool.com/ or http://www.greenivyschools.com/.