Children are innately drawn to learning about the natural world around them, including plants, animals and people from around the globe. Our integrated cultural curriculum allows children to experience the beauty and diversity of people and nature in a hand-on and sensorial way.
Students explore plants in their natural setting and learn about the parts of plants and corresponding precise nomenclature using puzzles, art, picture cards and booklets. They then create their own art and booklets to further reinforce the richness of their experiences.
They study the plant, flower, leaf, root, stem, seeds and their parts; dissect flowers; learn Latin names of leaf shapes; use a magnifying glass to study roots, sprout seeds and grow plants.
Zoology studies begin with the very youngest children learning to name animals and sort them into appropriate environments (i.e. animals that live on a farm, in a rainforest or in a temperate forest). Students build on their sorting skills practiced in Practical Life by sorting model animals into vertebrate or invertebrate; studying 5 classes of vertebrates represented by the fish, frog, turtle, bird and horse; learning about life cycles of insects as they observe the process. Students begin to understand the concept of biomes and the interrelatedness of life on earth.
The Earth Science curriculum is integrated with Geography curriculum and includes a study of the globe, its continents and oceans. Young explorers learn the name of the seven continents through song, and then study in-depth the animals and people living on each continent. An understanding of our global community is developed through learning about the language, homes, food, dress, flags and traditions of people of many different cultures.
Young cartographers work with puzzle maps in a specific sequence and may make maps of the Planisphere, North America, the United States, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia and Antarctica. With the development of writing skills, students label continents, countries, states and provinces.
After the development of water pouring and sponging skills, the young child receives a sensorial impression of simple land and water formations such as the lake and island, isthmus and strait, cape and bay, gulf and peninsula, archipelago and a system of lakes by pouring water to create these forms or using clay or sand to make their own.