Croton Community Nursery School

Croton Community Nursery School offers play-based preschool programs that include outdoor play, funny games, and a Learning & Fun Summer Program. Children take part in activities such as painting, crafts, music, singing, dancing, drama, collages, and using crayons and markers, along with monthly music and library programs. The program also includes educational field trips, school presentations, playground activities, and visits from community members such as firefighters, librarians, and dentists, as well as visits to the elderly.

• Ages: 1–4 years old
• Schedule: Business hours Monday–Friday, with morning and afternoon class sessions between 9:00 am and 3:15 pm

Since 1945, Croton Community Nursery School has operated as a cooperative preschool with classes for 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds and has been educating children for over seventy years. The school follows a philosophy of learning through play, offering a stimulating environment where work and play, fun and learning take place at the same time. Class sizes are 10 children for the 2s–3s class and 14 children for the 3s–Pre-K class, with individual attention in a small-class setting.

The teachers, in cooperation with family and community, create a nurturing environment that enables children to develop independence, curiosity, respect, and a passion for learning. The program includes activities in social studies such as learning about holidays, similarities and differences, cultures, community, families, workers, and cooperation. Science topics include weather, seasons, plants, experiments, animals, space, humans, fire safety, nutrition, dinosaurs, and exploration with water and sand tables. Language activities include spoken and printed language, stories, poems, books, name recognition, letters in upper and lower case, signs, charts, lists, and telling stories, while math activities include counting, calendar work, blocks, patterns, number recognition, days of the week, months, shapes, sorting, graphing, time, measurements, and cooking.

Croton Community Nursery School is a cooperative school where parents are actively involved in social activities and in the teaching process through monthly parent participation days. Parents are described as an integral part of their child’s first school experience at the program and become part of a community working together to help grow the school. Social activities connected to this community involvement include firefighter visits, librarian visits, dentist visits, and visits to the elderly.

The school states that it provides a safe, nurturing, and developmentally appropriate learning environment, appreciates and respects each child’s unique learning style and pace of intellectual and physical growth, and focuses on each child’s individual needs through educational and age-appropriate programs. The stated goal is to create a place that engages each child, with a friendly atmosphere and a welcoming place for every child. Croton Community Nursery School is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation and does not discriminate by race, religion, sex, or handicap with regard to admissions or the granting of scholarships.

The director of Croton Community Nursery School is Barbara Swanson. Testimonials from parents describe positive experiences with the staff, note that children enjoy being at the school, and report satisfaction with the teaching their children receive.

Last updated February 6, 2026.