ALTAMONT — Annie Graham Cosgrove designed the logo for One Love Preschool: She drew the Earth in the shape of a heart with rays radiating from it.

Cosgrove herself is radiant as she describes realizing a longheld dream — founding her own preschool.

Describing her philosophy as well as the school’s logo, Cosgrove says, “We’re global citizens. We have to be accepting and understanding of other cultures. At One Love, the kids collaborate together, parents collaborate with them, and we collaborate with the community...We’re loving each other and being stewards for the Earth.”

Cosgrove, who has a master’s degree from The College of Saint Rose in early-childhood education, has taught in both private and public schools for a quarter of a century. She has for years, though, thought about having her own school.

“After the election, I decided, it’s time,” Cosgrove said. “Everyone is kind of ready for goodness.”

Cosgrove’s philosophy is inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach, named for a city in Italy. After World War II, Cosgrove said, “People there asked, ‘How can we make the world a better place?’”

The Reggio approach lets children follow their interests to make discoveries.

In the entryway to One Love Preschool is a thought from psychologist Loris Malaguzzi, a founder of Reggio, written on slate: “Nothing without joy.”

Cosgrove, who lives with her husband, Don, in Delmar, searched for a place for her school that would be part of a walkable community. She found it on Maple Avenue in Altamont, and has transformed  a small office attached to the back of the Altamont Physical Therapy building into an airy and vibrant space.

“Sensory driven”

The entry hallway is lined with wooden cubbies topped with treasures. A small wooden bench made by a friend of Cosgrove gives kids a place to sit while they put on or take off their boots or shoes.

This entry opens into the school’s central room, filled with light from two large windows reflecting off white walls and a new wood-like floor. Colorful natural-fiber hooked rugs define different play areas.

“It’s like a gallery space,” said Cosgrove, explaining that bulletin boards can be limiting.

A huge easel is anchored to one wall; art is essential to the Reggio approach, Cosgrove notes. Most of the other furniture — child-sized tables and spring green chairs — is adaptable to the project at hand.

“The classroom doesn’t stay the same,” said Cosgrove.

In one corner of the central room, anchored by a colorful wool rug, are shelves of items to build with, with more variety than just traditional blocks. Cosgrove displays a basket of river stones gathered at her family’s camp in northern New Hampshire. “We gravitate to natural things,” she said. “It just feels better.”

Nearby, a huge calendar hangs on the wall. It has pockets for each day but now most of them are blank. It will be up to the children to fill the empty squares with numerals or letters or designs of their choosing.

The room also has a light pad, which can be brought outside as well, and a water table. “We do a lot of science, testing hypotheses,” said Cosgrove. “It’s very sensory driven.”

On one table, several pale green chrysalides hang from a net dome, waiting for monarch butterflies to emerge. “Nothing is more exciting than having a butterfly come out of its chrysalis and know that it will fly to Mexico,” she said.

A nook off the main room houses a Waldorf playstand made in Colorado. It can serve as a pretend kitchen, complete with stove burners and a sink. A table nearby is set with “real glasses and cloth napkins,” Cosgrove points out. The school snacks, she said, will be “organic and natural.”

The playstand at the moment has its arched top covered with a translucent shimmering blue cloth. “It can be a bear cave; it can be a beaver dam; it can be a puppet theater; it can be whatever the kids want to make it,” said Cosgrove.

“Kids kept coming”

Cosgrove grew up in Massachusetts where her mother was a special-education assistant teacher and her father was a mechanical engineer. “We were always outside, hiking and camping. My mother was always painting, creating things,” said Cosgrave.

Her own nursery-school teacher raised sheep and taught a young Cosgrove to tend them and to rove wool.

She returned to those roots only after first getting a bachelor’s degree in hotel management from the University of Massachusetts. Her first job was in a New York City Marriott. “The housekeepers could not speak English,” she said, and so could not help their children with their schoolwork. So Cosgrove stepped in to help. “More and more kids kept coming,” she said.

She realized her career should be teaching children and went back to school to get teacher certification from the University of Rhode Island. Then, as an independent-study project in graduate school, Cosgrove researched the Reggio approach and realized it was for her.

Over the years, as more state and federal regulations have been imposed on education, Cosgrove said, she has been disheartened to see workbooks, rote learning, and prescribed programs make their way into the younger grades and preschool.

“With Common Core, there was pressure to institute workbook learning,” she said. “Most kids learn better hands-on.” She emphasizes that doesn’t mean kids in a school using the Reggio approach aren’t learning.

The learning, like the setting, is organic, she said.

“We’re very purposeful and mindful of what we’re doing,” said Cosgrove. She uses an “emergent curriculum,” meaning it follows interests.

For example, she said, a student serving the preschool as Helper of the Day, would need to count to see “how many people are here.” Or, her students will learn about colors and shapes as they work on quilting.

Cosgrove has her students learn to set up a sewing machine and, with supervision, sew their own pillows. She has heard from former students of hers, now in college, who still treasure the pillows they made themselves in preschool.

“It’s not produce, produce, produce,” she said of her approach. “Learning is not always easy, but you have to learn to persevere through the frustration and come out the other side confident.”

The Reggio approach teaches that there are “100 languages of childhood.” Cosgrove explained, of these languages, “They’re not always verbal. It can be through drama, building, or drawing….Reggio teases out each person’s strengths.”

The provocations or investigations she sets out daily — which could be something as simple as considering a vase of flowers — “provokes them to think in different pathways,” she said.

Partners

Cosgrove has already formed several partnerships and plans to form more. She has met with Joe Burke at the Altamont Free Library where her preschoolers will go to do research and listen to stories, she said.

Cosgrove has also met with Keith Lee, who has designed and planted many village gardens. Her students will become “junior gardeners,” she said, adopting an area to tend at Schilling Park on Maple Avenue near the tot lot where kids can play.

Cosgrove has also met with Nancy Engel at the Emma Treadwell Thacher Nature Center where her students will go for programs in alternating months. In the in-between months, the nature programs will be brought to the preschool.

She anticipates future partnerships, perhaps with a local yoga studio or bakery.

And, Cosgrove, said, the preschool is a sponsor of Altamont’s fall festival on Sept. 30.

“Altruism becomes a habit”

Cosgrove will offer two sessions a day, Monday through Friday, from 9 to 11:30 a.m. and from 12:30 to 3 p.m. The program for 3- to 5-year-olds runs from September through June. She said classes will never have more than 10 students.

She is keeping the school “intentionally small,” Cosgrove said “to get to know the children intimately and meet their needs more closely.”

She will work with an assistant.

Cosgrove said she set tuition — $3,980 for the full school year — to be “on a par with church and community schools.”

“Our program is more child-centered, arts-based, and collaborative with the community,” she said. “It’s part of our fabric.”

One example she gave of how her preschoolers will help a larger community was through the Red Bookshelf program, which re-circulates gently-used children’s books back into the community.

She and her husband have served as foster parents, Cosgrove said. “So I know what a book can mean to a child who has nothing,” she said. “Kids can be in a crisis and escape into a book.”

She said her preschoolers would clean the donated books and so be part of the giving process. “This is instead of giving money; kids don’t understand money,” she said.

Cosgrove concluded, “Altruism becomes a habit.”

Summing up the purpose of her school, Cosgrove said, “We’re here to help parents and kids. They’ll have years and years of rigid classroom learning. Let’s capitalize on their wonderment.”