Four– and five–year–olds enter Princeton Friends School through the Beginning School, while students in first through eighth grades are housed in the Schoolhouse. First and second graders spend their days in self–contained classrooms that mix with each other during the afternoon, while third through eighth graders enjoy an increasingly departmentalized program, often in multi–age groupings, as they move up through the school.

Central Study

At the core of the academic program is the school's Central Study curriculum, a common focus, changing each year, that is developed by the faculty as a whole and presented to students across the grades. Each year-long thematic study invites children to examine the world through a specific lens, drawing connections across subject areas. As part of the Central Study theme On Time, for example, students read and wrote personal memoirs, built sundials and water clocks, read science fiction stories involving time travel, studied evolution in science classes, wrestled with math problems related to time zones, and examined different attitudes toward time across cultures. While studying Rivers, students rafted down the Delaware and canoed in the New Jersey Pinelands, built a stream table to observe erosion and delta formation, worked with clay in art classes, studied ancient civilizations that depended upon rivers for their livelihood, and read sections from Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi. When we focused on Earth Matters, students examined the ways in which people have used the Earth's resources throughout history, the impact of resources on the economy, politics, and culture of different peoples, and the choices individuals and communities face regarding our use of the Earth's resources. These concepts were addressed through age-appropriate units on the geology and history of the New Jersey Pinelands, the culture of the Lenape people of the mid-Atlantic coast, the agricultural revolution and history of farming, and studies of the Great Plains, the Yangtze River, and the Amazon rain forest.

The coming year's theme of Cultural Chemistry will blend social studies and science to illuminate some of the most pressing issues in the world today and the most exciting solutions for the challenges we will face tomorrow.

Each year as well, Princeton Friends School organizes a service trip to visit our sister school in Guatemala City, Guatemala. This much-anticipated annual event is open to older students, as well as to faculty, parents, and alumni.