The Eastern Ridge School was founded in 2014 by a group of parents and teachers passionate about creating a preschool with a strong sense of community while fostering deep connection to self, others, and the natural world. We’re a nonprofit school governed by a volunteer board of directors. The program director reports directly to the board.
In 2025, the school’s name was updated, becoming Eastern Ridge Nature Preschool, to better reflect what makes our program so special.
Eastern Ridge is located near Wolf Trap National Park, minutes from Tyson’s Corner. We have families joining us from Great Falls, Vienna, Reston, Falls Church, Arlington, and Alexandria.
Our Mission
To nurture a school-family where children, teachers, and parents are collaborators in creating a process-based learning environment rooted in authentic connections with one another, with beautiful materials, and with the natural world, and where each individual is truly known and valued.
Our Philosophy
In the words of child development expert Jean Piaget, we believe “play is the work of childhood.”
Additionally, we believe there is no better setting for building healthy developing bodies and brains than in the great outdoors, where the natural environment provides all of the raw materials necessary for both active and contemplative play, exploration, discovery, and creativity.
Our philosophy is modeled after the forest schools of Scandinavia and is also influenced by the theories of constructivist thinkers such as John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, and Howard Gardner, whose work helped inspire the Reggio Emilia approach.
Through a responsive emergent curriculum, our teachers follow the children’s interests as they introduce project work. They are intentional about scaffolding skills for collaboration and group problem solving both in their approach to projects as well as in working through the daily social/emotional challenges that arise in preschool.
We are a nature-based, mostly outdoor school dedicated to nurturing curious, confident, joyful learners through an intentional balance of open-ended play and hands-on exploration with beautiful materials from art and nature.
Our Values
Community
A strong, supportive community is essential to developing eager, confident learners. We believe learning happens best through shared experiences, and with adults and children working side by side.
Families are actively engaged in our school, serving on committees, attending community work days, and participating in educational and social events.
Nature and Time Outdoors
We believe nature is an important tool in the cognitive, emotional, and social development of children. The outdoors is our primary classroom, where curiosity, wonder, and joy fuel learning and discovery through child-led play and exploration.
When the children do come inside, they are welcomed into homelike surroundings filled with authentic, high quality materials, and a nature inspired aesthetic.
Diversity and Inclusion
The Eastern Ridge Nature Preschool is a community that welcomes and celebrates children, families, and teachers in all their backgrounds and identities.
Our small community is notably diverse in its representation of cultural heritages from across the globe, a microcosm of the cultural diversity of the DC metropolitan area.
We actively strive to create an environment where kindness and respect are the foundation for how children learn to relate to one another, and this is modeled in the way that teachers interact with children and with each other.
Our actions and our attitudes reflect our respect for each individual, and we are mindful that our language, our materials, and our policies reflect inclusion regardless of gender, race, religion, or family composition.
Respect
We are respectful of children and value their perspectives. Viewing our students as competent and capable people creates a compassionate, accepting environment where they are free to express themselves and develop their own unique views.
We recognize the “hundred languages of children,” referring to the many different ways children have of expressing themselves, including drawing, sculpture, building, dramatic play, and writing.
Unstructured Play
Unstructured play is critical to supporting children’s ability to develop their own potential and individual interests. Our program offers plenty of time for open-ended play with a range of open-ended materials.
We believe this time to play, investigate, and negotiate is the foundation for the natural emergence of children’s development across all modalities; they find their expressive voices, learn to integrate input from all of their senses, and develop problem-solving and social emotional skills, including self-regulation and risk assessment.
Project-based Learning
We “learn by doing.” Project-based learning is experiential, allowing for deep exploration of topics such as math, science, and language arts. It develops critical thinking, collaborative skills, creativity and communication skills.
Students are engaged in learning because projects emerge from their interests and questions, giving them ownership and investment in the process.
We do not impose themes or academic lessons. Our rich environment invites investigations through which exposure to, and skills in, the academic realm are natural by-products, geared to the developmental readiness of each individual