Our Campus
Situated on a beautiful 48-acre campus in the northwest corner of Connecticut, Washington Montessori School is approximately 2 hours from New York City and 3 hours from Boston, MA. We moved to our current location at 240 Litchfield Turnpike in New Preston in 2001. Our school building is 57,000 square-feet and includes classrooms, open community space, a ceramics studio, a theater and gymnasium. Lower School, Lower Elementary and Upper Elementary classes enjoy adjacent, covered outdoor classroom space.
Our 48-acre campus includes one regulation soccer field, one practice field, four tennis courts and three playgrounds as well as an outdoor basketball court, a gaga pit and tether ball. YCC and LS students enjoy newly-installed, self-contained natural playgrounds that include shade arbors, embankment slides, climbing rocks, tunnel crawls, sculptures, and a sand area with a working water sluice. The Elementary playground includes swings, embankment slides, a sand area, a four square court as well as a large ship-like structure for climbing, swinging and other imaginative play.
Students enjoy working in the school's Community Garden which acts as a satellite to the Judea Garden, a Steep Rock Association project that grows and distributes fresh food to community members in need. In 2020, we established ourselves as a CT Green LEAF school and in the spring of the same year, WMS completed the installation of approximately 600 solar panels which provide approximately 85% of the school’s electricity.
The woods surrounding campus are lined with well-maintained nature trails and boardwalks, an outdoor science lab nestled by the river and a quarter-mile running trail called “Pat’s Track,” named after WMS Head of School Emeritus Pat Werner.
Located just outside the Head’s Office is our Peace Garden, which was a collaborative project conceived, designed and installed by parents and staff shortly after we moved to the new facility. A meandering path of stepping stones leads through a garden of assorted flowering trees and shrubs to a wood platform which has been known to serve as an informal stage for celebrations, a conference room for level meetings, a plein air studio for art class and a platform for yoga and mindfulness among other things. Planted prominently in the garden is our Peace Pole bearing the words “May Peace Prevail on Earth” in six languages.