Lakeside School Awarded Grant for Expansion

Lakeside School received grant from ACT — Lakeside School received a grant from ACT through the Essex Community Fund. (Photo courtesy Valley News)

Lakeside School has been awarded a grant of $2,500 from the Essex Community Fund at the Adirondack Community Trust.

Lakeside School, located at Black Kettle Farm in Essex, has offered early childhood education programs for the past six years. As they begin their seventh school year, they will add first grade to their offerings with the intention of growing into a primary school up to third grade. The grant from the Essex Community Fund through the Adirondack Community Trust will give the school additional resources to purchase supplies and equipment to prepare the first grade classroom.

The Waldorf curriculum at Lakeside embraces a child’s current developmental stage. In the early grades the curriculum addresses the needs of preschoolers and kindergartners by being keenly aware of a child’s inner and outer growth and development, creating a love of learning and social and emotional intelligence by focusing on the three areas that are critical to children at this stage: play, imitation and rhythm. Through a daily rhythm of creative play, caring for the land and farm animals, household chores, nature exploration, storytelling, music, and arts and crafts, the children develop their natural ability to imitate and their power of imagination in a warm, beautiful and loving home-like environment.

The First Grade experience is a time of gentle transition into the limbs and the mind beginning to work together. During this developmental stage, the child is living primarily in his feeling realm; therefore each academic process for which he is ready is brought to him clothed in an artistic activity. The Waldorf elementary school teacher presents every lesson as a story that appeals to the student’s imagination. Children are introduced to reading and the alphabet in a rich, creative and artistic way. All of the children at Lakeside School take advantage of the diverse outdoor experiences at the farm and spend time playing and working in the outdoors each day, rain or shine… even snow!

The Essex Community Fund (ACT) is a component fund of the Adirondack Community Trust, a community foundation working to build permanent and pass-through funds to help meet current and future charitable needs of the Adirondack region. ACT is structured so that donors can take full advantage of tax benefits either during their lifetime or through their estates. Funds are pooled for investment and grants are made annually according to donors’ wishes. ACT currently manages 200 different endowed and pass-through funds with assets of $30 million dollars and has made grants totaling nearly $20 million to benefit the Adirondack region and beyond.