Our Buildings

We invite you to step into a world built just for young children by an in-house architect and design team.

Individual in personality, each of our beautiful buildings shares a common design and philosophy that is felt throughout all our Kensington Schools. Our first school building, located on Kensington Avenue in LaGrange, Illinois served as the town’s first schoolhouse. Built in 1894, The Old North School’s unique interior architecture has served as inspiration for the construction of all subsequent Kensington School buildings.

From the drawing board to completion, each Kensington School provides the highest standards of safety, comfort, and security for each child. Our school buildings are a well-balanced combination of cheerful, individual classrooms and active areas such as the gym, library, roundabout, play yards and gardens. Above all, they are welcoming and engaging. Our children instantly recognize them as their own.

We welcome your visit and trust that you, too, will appreciate these extraordinary early childhood settings in a world built just for them.

Our Classrooms

The Vision of a Kensington Classroom

Open the door to a Kensington School classroom and you will find a vibrant learning environment full of natural light spilling through over-sized windows. Filled with wonderful, pleasing spaces, our classrooms encourage children to be active learners, deriving great pleasure from their freedom and independence.

The Kensington classroom design is very specific in its objectives. Well-defined classroom areas separate active from quiet play, and individual from small group experiences. Carefully developed, stimulating interest centers encourage child-initiated investigations. Engaging spaces for dramatic play provide quiet nooks for reading or conversation.

Visitors always comment on the beauty of Kensington School’s classroom furnishings and equipment. The warmth of wood, quality workmanship with the highest safety standards, and an abundance of carefully selected learning materials combine to present a very appealing environment.

Our Outdoor Environments

Visit a Kensington School outdoor green space and you will find a spacious combination of customized play structures for every age, grassy areas for group play or picnicking, patios full of easels and sensory tubs, tricycles on riding tracks, and child- planted organic gardens. From our youngest splashing and enjoying water play on the patio, to our preschoolers going on nature hunts and discovering the signs of the changing seasons, to older kindergarteners playing soccer or reading, and even taking our music or yoga classes outside on a beautiful day – Kensington loves to take learning outdoors.

From “cooking” in the summer Kensington Mud Kitchen to winter snow fort making, Kensington School’s outdoor environments become an extension of the classroom in every season.