ELEMENTARY Grades
First to Fifth Grade
The Elementary Grades curriculum focuses on a wide range of core subjects, including mathematics, science, history, geography, language arts and Spanish, while also emphasizing the arts, music, drama, handwork and movement.
first grade
In first grade, children are excited new learners. They listen to fairy tales and nature stories, draw letters and numbers, and learn letter sounds and combinations. These activities, built upon the rich oral storytelling of the early childhood years, provide strong foundations for reading, writing, and vocabulary. First grade math is a subject on the go! Movement accompanies counting and the introduction and practice of all four arithmetic processes.
The students learn songs and poems in English and Spanish by ear; they craft wooden knitting needles and learn to knit; they engage in healthy movement and games. Additionally, they learn how to harmonize their relationships and become an integral part of the school community. Learning is a tangible activity that engages their entire being through experience and imagination.
second & Third grades
The second grade curriculum mirrors the inner experience of the child. The highest human ideals (conveyed through stories of saints and other exemplary human beings) are contrasted with the behavior of trickster animals in fables, allowing a sense of human morality to develop. Students illustrate these stories as their reading, writing, and drawing skills strengthen. They learn cursive letters and explore symmetry in form drawing. Movement and stories lead to working with place value, times tables, and more complex arithmetic.
In Third Grade a significant change occurs in the way children experience themselves and the world. The foundations that naturally carry them fall away and the children experience their first real sense that they are an individual. Study of the Hebrew stories, from the expulsion from the garden to the trials of the Hebrew people mirror outwardly the inner experience of the third grader. Study of farming, cooking, clothing and shelter, and practical activities bring the curriculum to life. Measurements for building and cooking lend math a practical lens, and students learn to crochet a practical hat and a pouch. While daily music continues in the classroom with playing the recorder and singing of rounds, third graders are now introduced to violin, viola or cello, and join the ensemble.
fourth & fifth Grades
Fourth Grade is a year of adventure. Students delve into the heroic tales of Norse mythology, and explore Local History and Geography from the Finger Lakes Region. Science study begins with the Human Being and Animal Kingdom, often the subject of a much-anticipated research report. Fractions are introduced in math, and studies in English explore grammar and parts of speech as other means of dividing up the metaphorical pie. Students continue and expand their music study by continued practice of violin, viola or cello. Themes of division and fractions are echoed in form drawing, where students create patterns in a four-way mirror, in the same way that they design their own unique cross stitch piece in handwork class.
Fifth Grade students are perched in an age of developmental balance between the wonder of early childhood and the internal focus of the middle school years. A change in the daily morning verse reflects a shift from an external experience (“The sun with loving light makes bright for me each day”) to an individual action (“I look into the world, in which the sun is shining”) as teachers encourage confidence and the beginning of independent academic thinking. They study history for the first time as an academic discipline rather than a collection of stories, beginning with ancient India, Persia, and Egypt, and culminating in ancient Greece, itself a culture of balance and harmony. To complement these academic classes, the students learn the skills of the ancient pentathlon and then participate in a Greek Olympiad. The study of geography expands from state to nation, and the fifth grade harmony is further reflected in artistic geometry. Subject classes in choral music teach vocal harmony, and the study of botany deepens scientific observation and inquiry skills.