Campus Tour |New Canaan Country School

Founded in 1916, New Canaan Country School is located in the town of New Canaan in Fairfield County, CT, and occupies 75 wooded acres with six major buildings, five playing fields and a 35-acre nature preserve with a low-ropes challenge course, an outdoor classroom and a cross-country running trail.
Grace House: The main entrance to the campus is framed by rows of maple trees revealing a beautiful view of the school's historic Grace House. Built in 1899, this building houses the reception area, administrative offices including Admission and the Head of School office. Additinally, Horizons - a national Student Enrichment Program for which Country School was a founding member, is located there.
Grace House Lobby: The main lobby houses our receptionist, hosts student art displays and on occasion features historical exhibits from the School's archives.
The Susan Haigh Carver '51 Dining Hall serves lunch to students in family-style groups, by grade level, and on a rotating basis (tables are assigned to all but 9th graders). Teachers dine with the children in Grades 1-9 in an atmosphere that encourages community.
We believe that food is an education and path to a healthy lifestyle. Whenever possible, we utilize locally sourced food in providing an array of options every day, which includes a salad bar, deli bar, yogurt bar, daily homemade soups, and a hot entree - all grounded in wellness to fuel a child’s day.
Adjacent to the Dining Hall, the Carver Commons is a community gathering space, perfect for parents and students to socialize as well as for small receptions and admission events.
Informed by the Reggio Emilia philosophy and built in 2002, the Nicholas S. Thacher Building has served as a remarkable home for the Early Childhood Education Program. Beginners and Kindergarteners enjoy large, open classrooms ideal for play and group activity.
Children thrive in an environment that offers ample indoor and outdoor space to play, create, question, experiment and explore. All of the classrooms in the Early Childhood division have doors that lead to fields and playgrounds allowing for spontaneous moments in which to get outdoors!
On Friday mornings, each classroom in the Thacher building winds its way to the center of the piazza to form a large community circle that we call Gathering, the beginning of the child’s knowledge of their own voice, how their words convey a message and how that message can have meaningful connection to others. These moments are the foundation for the thread of public speaking opportunities that weave their way through the fabric of the Country School experience.
Early Childhood classrooms are large, full of light and have multiple work and play spaces.
In Kindergarten art, there is no right or wrong answer. We challenge the children to look closely, think deeply and then express what they see, feel, and imagine. The materials are plentiful and sometimes unexpected, which requires them to make decisions about what to use and why. Whether the medium is drawing or construction or papermaking, the message is consistent and clear: being creative is not something artists do; it’s something we all do.
The Exploratory Lab in Early Childhood is a space where play intersects with elements of art, science, design and engineering. Where children ages three to six are invited to explore materials, test hypotheses, discover connections and construct knowledge, the Exporatory Lab provides endless stimulation.
Completed in 1968 and renovated in 2017, the Welles Building, named for former Headmaster Henry Welles, houses our Lower School, Grades 1 through 4. The Schlesinger Reading Garden is a beautiful spot for the younger children to read with their Upper School buddies.
Typical of Country School spirit and love of the outdoors, older students use the hill outside the Lower School building for sledding in winter, a time-honored recess tradition.
Renovated in 2017, bright, child-friendly classrooms open inside to a central commons area and outside to various play areas connecting children to each other and to nature.
Pops of color, furniture designed for innovative learning, and child-friendly accents throughout rounded out the recent renovation. And where reading is so central, there are plenty of cozy nooks in which to curl up with a book.
The Perrine Commons: The Lower School building has a central commons area which is used for Rhythms classes, weekly lower school assemblies and special events. The Rhythms program, which has been a hallmark of the NCCS curriculum for over half a century, is a unique course in nonverbal expression which emphasizes body movement and offers varied avenues for the exercise of each child’s imagination.
Each week, the Lower School community gathers to sing together, laugh together, and hear from each other during Assembly. This is our version of a family gathering around the dinner table; we give each other our full attention and share our stories. While Lower School Assembly is a joyful part of our week, is it also an invaluable public speaking experience to build competence and confidence.
Through music, students discover the tones and rhythms of our world, develop relationships with one another, and build community. Lower School students are explosed to a wide variety of instruments and all students participate in chorus.
The Lower School Library serves as a resource for all students from Beginners through the fourth grade community. Kindergarten through grade 4 students visit the library weekly, individually and in groups. They learn about books of interest, the organization of the library, and how to use the resources of print and electronic media. The goal of the NCCS libraries is to foster a love of reading and to provide the tools necessary for independent learning.
Students enjoy the Lower School playgrounds during their twice daily recess, an essential, planned respite from rigorous cognitive tasks. Country School believes that recess promotes social and emotional learning and development for children by offering them a time to engage in peer interactions in which they practice and role play essential social skills.
Students begin to participate in Wood Shop in Grade 3. Boys and girls meet in small classes to learn how to use hand and power tools, create beautiful and useful wooden projects, and study principles of design. Middle schoolers participate in the visual arts, woodshop, Maker Lab and drama. In the Upper School, seventh graders continue building upon fine art and craftsmanship as part of the whole-grade creative arts foundations course.
Every winter, students in pre-kindergarten through ninth grade collect maple sap and boil it down to syrup in the school’s Sugar Shack. The students tap maple trees all over the school’s 75-acre campus, collect the sap, boil it down, then sample it. The unit combines science, history and math. Students learn about the physiology of trees, how to use the proper equipment and how to calculate density and temperature.
The Middle School, renovated in 2016, houses classrooms for Grades 5 and 6. The Middle School building is also home to music rooms, two science rooms, a Spanish room and small group spaces.
Students are given more responsibility in Middle School, including the added laptop requirement, and they develop sound study and time management skills. They continue to practice and master their academic competency and push their creative and critical thinking. By participating in collaborative projects, they learn to work together by accepting and giving feedback to their peers – critical skills for success in life and in the workplace.
Students in Middle School learn scientific methodologies through a variety of hands-on experiences in Earth, life and physical sciences, with a focus on geology, weather, the human body, electricity and bird identification.
The smaller of the school's two indoor athletic facilities, the Middle School Gymnasium plays host to sports such as volleyball and basketball, as well as Lower School physical education classes and Middle School activities.
Several studies from the American Academy of Pediatrics demonstrated that recess, whether performed indoors or outdoors, made children more attentive and more productive in the classroom. Even minor movement during recess counterbalances sedentary time at school and at home and helps the child achieve the recommended 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per day.
Upper School students (Grades 7 through 9) acquire the habits of mind - creativity, perseverance and independent thought - which foster lifelong learners. Our Upper School students not only seize opportunities, they also create them.
The Stevens building, renovated in 2008, was certified by the U.S. Green Building Council for meeting its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards, known as LEED standards. Projects are rated on the materials used, indoor air quality, water efficiency, and other factors. The Stevens building attained the LEED Silver certification.
Every ninth grader delivers a "This I Believe" speech to the entire Upper School in which they reflect on their values and experiences, while also showcasing their writing and public speaking skills.
The Alumni Commons is also used as a space for Upper schoolers to relax, study independently, socialize with friends and come together as a building once a week for announcements.
Included in the George E. Stevens building - a 41,000 square-foot facility - are three Upper School science classrooms with state-of-the-art equipment. Classroom and lab work is complemented by field studies, both on campus and at regional sites.
An Upper School art classroom: Students in Grades 7-9 can choose from art electives that include drawing, painting, printmaking and photography as well as ceramics, film making and jewelry making. Regular field trips to area and New York City museums enhance the students' arts education. Seventh graders continue building upon fine art and craftsmanship as part of the whole-grade creative arts foundations course. Eighth and ninth graders choose from a variety of visual arts electives such as Design for the Future, Boat Making, Clay Hand Building, Short Film and Portraiture.
The Amicus Foundation MakerSpace Design Lab is located in the Upper School’s Stevens Building. The space is designed to promote openness, shared experiences, collaboration and rapid development from ideas to physical creations. Students in grades 5-9 use this space to design, experiment, build and invent as they engage deeply in science, mathematics, engineering and self-expression.
In September 2020, we opened our new Athletics & Wellness Center, a space that will enhance the school experience for all students and contribute to our strong sense of community.
The new facility includes two full-size basketball and volleyball courts (which can turn into four practice courts), four squash courts, an expanded fitness center and a dance studio, as well as large student locker rooms.
The New Canaan Winter Club, privately owned but affiliated with Country School, is the site of weekly skating lessons for Kindergarten through Grade 4, daily hockey practices and games for Grades 5 through 9.
Five athletic fields host a variety of sports, physical education classes, field days and school events. Football, soccer, field hockey, softball, baseball, cross-country, and lacrosse, all take place on school fields.
Country School has 35 acres of largely undeveloped forest with a wide variety of flora and fauna. Teachers and students in all grades and all subjects use the woods as an outdoor classroom. The acreage consists of a vernal pond and boardwalks, marked trails (our cross country course) and a low-ropes challenge course.
The NCCS woods also include a low-ropes course, designed to challenge students to work together to solve a problem or achieve a collective goal.
Inspired by their reading of "Roxaboxen," an award-winning children’s book written by Alice McLerran and illustrated by Barbara Cooney, Country School second graders head to the woods every fall to build their own imaginary town, working around the 35-acre outdoor classroom space stacking logs, piling stones, exchanging acorns and leaves as imaginary money, and creating bakeries, pet shops, fire stations and more. The second grade tradition is part of community building and combines traditional teaching methods, such as a read-aloud, with an experiential component.
The John-Christophe Schlesinger Library serves both as a traditional library and - thanks to a gift from the Amicus Foundation - a hands-on Innovation Lab.
New Canaan Country School is committed to technology integration throughout the curriculum. At Country School, technology provides our students with essential tools that 'challenge students to question, to think, to collaborate and to act with integrity.' Teachers use technology to enhance curricular content and expand our students’ global connections as they develop skills for the 21st century. Students collaborate on programming and designing projects in the Innovation Lab.
Creativity, collaboration and risk-taking are at the heart of our program. Students are taught to build, test and rebuild. It's about precision and flexibility, design and function, and breaking down complex challenges into solvable parts.
The auditorium is located in Grace House and seats approximately 425. A wide range of events take place here, including student concerts and drama productions, assemblies with professional artists, community lectures, student public speaking as well as regular drama and orchestra classes.
The Lower School Arts Assembly, a quintessential Country School event, in which first and second grade students create the set and choreograph all of the dances themselves.
Middle schoolers may select a drama-production course in the winter instead of participating in an intramural sport and in the Upper School students may elect to further develop their dramatic skills as part of the whole-grade creative arts foundations course. In eighth and ninth grade, elective courses are available in improvisation, technical theater, mime and dance. Students in all three grades may elect to participate in a fully realized theatrical production each year drawn from timeless Broadway musicals and classic dramatic works. Opportunities for work in all areas of stagecraft and further development of vocal, dance and acting skills are built into this activity.

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