We believe in an education that is connected to nature, artistic, academic, interdisciplinary, multi-sensory, practical, and social, AND learning that is joyful!
Our curriculum unfolds according to the educational and emotional needs of the child’s developmental stages, in order to nourish the healthy growth of the child.
The grades program encourages independent thinking and social responsibility as well as academic and artistic excellence.
Our teachers offer lively concentration in subjects taught in three to four week lesson blocks. This allows content to rest at times; it is then reawakened later, to find the children have a deeper understanding of the material when given the opportunity to let it steep. In general, one can expect a subject to be introduced one year, practiced the next, and then mastered the third year – for example, fractions are introduced in fourth grade, practiced in fifth grade (along with their counterpart, decimal fractions), and mastered in 6th grade, perfectly timed with their introduction to Business math, percentages and the like.
Children, throughout the curriculum, create original lesson books that expand artistic freedom and in-depth understanding of history, language arts, science, and math.
Foreign languages, when available, are taught with exploration into the rich culture of the language.
Movement, and handwork such as knitting, crochet and cross stitch, woodwork, and fine arts such as clay and beeswax modeling enhance motor skills, confidence, coordination, and creative thinking.
Music enriches the curriculum throughout the year, as well as following the seasonal calendar for Florida.
A typical day in the grades includes a two hour main academic lesson in the morning, infused with music and movement, a snack and outdoor recess, then one of several specialty subjects, such as handwork or qi gong, followed by lunch and outdoor recess, then concluding with another specialty, such as gardening, ukulele, or painting. Fridays are devoted to nature immersion in various local preserves, known as “Forest Fridays”, or a field trip that complements a theme of the curriculum, for example, in the third grade, farming is taught in great detail, so the third grade might apply their knowledge and work in a hands-on way on a local farm on several “Field Trip Fridays” over the year.
In the lower grades (1 – 3), main lesson curriculum follows a progression that emphasizes the following themes:
- Pictorial introduction to the alphabet, writing, reading, spelling, poetry, drama, form drawing, cursive, and singing.
- Folk and fairy tales, fables, legends, Old Testament stories.
- Numbers, basic mathematical processes of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, measurement.
- Nature stories, shelter building and farming.
In our middle grades (4 -6), learning begins to shift from the concrete to the conceptual
- Writing, reading, grammar, poetry, drama, and form drawing.
- Norse myths, history and stories of ancient civilizations.
- Review of the four mathematical processes, fractions, percentages, and geometry.
- Local and world geography, comparative zoology, botany, mineralogy, astronomy, and physics.
In our upper grades, students are shifting from a search for feeling to a search for truth:
- Creative writing, reading, grammar, poetry and drama.
- Medieval history, Renaissance, world exploration and geography, American history and biography.
- Perspective drawing, sacred geometry, descriptive geometry, review of all previous mathematical content, business math, finance, and algebra.
- Physics, including mechanics, chemistry, meteorology, anatomy, and physiology, environmental science, science of sustainability.
- Independent and project-based learning
- Entrepreneurship