"We begin right away to develop what it means to be in a community—the Milton Academy Kindergarten community," explains one teacher. "At morning meetings, we practice allowing someone to have the floor, asking questions and making constructive comments. We spend lots of time on tone, taking turns talking and listening."

During "Child of the Day," students take turns sitting quietly in the middle of the group. Other children, by turn, each give that child a compliment. This activity is a microcosm for the developmental progress of the children over time: While early compliments rely on something physical ("I like Jenny's pink headband"), the compliments evolve. Next often come thank-yous for actions that benefit the speaker ("Jenny shared her eraser with me"); eventually compliments migrate to solid comments about the child as a person.

Getting to know the new people in their lives continues for kindergarteners when they meet their fifth grade buddies. "The pairings all work out organically," their teacher says, "and the children frequently end up in a pair that you could predict—they walk and talk and find a comfortable match. Invariably, the right people find one another."

The Kindergarten curriculum focuses heavily on exploration and discovery, through interdisciplinary units. Favorite projects include bread baking, where children learn and test their skills of measurement in a hands-on experience with delicious outcomes. Students delve into the world of the penguin—researching the animal's climate, diet, habits and physical characteristics. In literature, they enjoy learning about "tricksters," in tales that teach moral lessons through the antics of mischievous characters. In combination with this, our kindergarteners develop their creative minds and fine motor skills sewing their own pillows, which feature a favorite trickster friend.

Every year at Milton, each K–8 grade reads a newly chosen summer book. The summer reading book stimulates new curriculum each fall, as the book is woven into the work and the activities at the start of school. The book and related activities are valuable conduits for seeding Milton's social and intellectual culture.

Among the opportunities available through a recent summer reading book, The Way Back Home by Oliver Jeffers, is experience with a key element of Milton culture: the open-ended problem. Milton classroom work is based on open-ended problems, that is, challenges without prescribed routes to solution or single answers. Children must often shift from the pattern they bring—that there's one way to get to a correct answer—to the idea that they need to think about different ways to approach this problem, and the various outcomes they might reach.

In addition to all the thinking they are doing and the skills they're building, Kindergarten children depend on their stamina and focus to thrive in a fast-paced environment. They are busy.

"The students' skill development, month by month, is astonishing," one teacher says. Children put together a "year book" of monthly contributions; comparing their writing in the early months to their final months' work is always impressive.

The teachers' goal is that their students finish the year not only with new skills, but as poised little individuals who understand themselves as smart and capable: "They have strengths, they have opinions, they know how to problem-solve," their teacher says. "They leave Kindergarten with a genuine sense of community. We work hard to establish the habit of thinking about other people, not just themselves." At the end of the year, the students leave Kindergarten excited about first grade: a sign of success that makes their teachers happy.

Click here to learn about the Kindergarten admission process.

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