"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire."
William Butler Yeats

Unique Aspects of Our Grades Program

Class teachers accompany a class for several consecutive years and teach all core subjects. The close relationship that develops between the class teacher and students benefit the child's growing confidence and self-esteem.

Academic work each day in the grades begins with a 2-hour Main Lesson that addresses core subjects in great depth. Blocks last three to four weeks to provide time for students to fully digest and assimilate the material.

Rather than standardized textbooks, students create written and illustrated Main Lesson Books from their teachers' presentations and blackboard drawings. This creative process enables them to "own" their learning and allows the children to experience a subject on a far deeper, richer level than the intellectual one.

Between the ages 7 and 14 children learn most naturally through beauty. That's why stories and art are used as teaching vehicles. The stories chosen for language arts and history blocks match closely the developmental stage of the children. For example, stories of saints & heroes and fables appeal to the developing sense of right and wrong of second-graders.

The dragon of courage our students built for the Michaelmas Celebration

Curriculum Overview

Primary Grades 1-3
Pictorial introduction to the alphabet, writing, reading, spelling, poetry, and drama. Folk and fairy tales, fables, legends, Old Testament stories. Numbers, basic mathematical processes of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Nature stories, house building, and gardening.

Middle Grades 4-6
Writing, reading, spelling, grammar, poetry, and drama. Norse myths, history and stories of ancient civilizations (Rom, Greece, India). Review of the four mathematical processes, fractions, percentage, and geometry. Local and world geography, comparative zoology, botany, and elementary physics.

Upper Grades 7-8
Creative writing, reading, spelling, grammar, poetry, and drama. Medieval history, Renaissance, world exploration, American history, and biography. Mathematics, geography, physics, basic chemistry, astronomy, and physiology.

Special subjects also taught are:
Handwork
Knitting, crochet, sewing, cross-stitch, basic weaving, toy making, and woodworking

Music
Singing, pentatonic flute, recorder and string instruments.

Foreign language 
Our Grades students are currently studying Spanish. In the future we will introduce a second foreign language.

Art
Watercolor painting, form drawing, beeswax and clay modeling, perspective drawing.

Movement
Eurythmy, group games; team sports for the older grades.

Performing a play the class wrote themselves for our Michaelmas Celebration

Please contact us to arrange a visit and to discuss your interest in our grades program!
For the 2017-18 school year we will have have classrooms for
first, second and third grade.

Grades Classes Vegetable Garden

One of the Grades Students lesson books

Students sanding down wooden rods to create their own knitting needles

Eurythmy class