Curriculum

We pack a lot of learning into a small school.

On the surface, the curriculum is much like that of a public elementary school. Children learn reading, mathematics, history, science, literature, and grammar. Volunteers from the church congregation and community enrich the school course offerings with art, music, chorus, physical education and drama, and occasional mini-courses in other special subjects, e.g. stamp collecting and Japanese culture.

You might well be wondering how a multi-grade classroom works. Picture the classic one-room schoolhouse, and you will have some idea. Until the 20th century, multi-grade classrooms were the norm almost everywhere. They were largely lost in the heyday of school amalgamation, but they're coming back. Small is beautiful, and students benefit from interacting with younger and older ones.

One mainstay of the multi-grade classroom is the rotating curriculum for social studies, science and religion. For the primary grades, there are three different year-long teaching themes. The specific subjects taught in that year are woven into the theme. Over a period of three years, students will cover all the subject areas in the primary curriculum. When, for example, the subject is colonial America, third graders will do more advanced work than first graders, but the whole classroom will be working on that subject.

Some subjects, in which skills are built gradually, do not rotate. Examples are math, reading, writing, and spelling. For these subjects, one grade will be introduced to new concepts while another grade is practicing something already learned. Students learn to work independently and cooperatively in small groups - skills that are obviously very useful as they grow up.

In pre-K and kindergarten, students spend a lot of time in motion, with games, cooking, songs, crafts, and field trips. The primary and intermediate grades are introduced into more academic subjects, but there is still plenty of time for fun.