In the early school years, children learn best when academics are conveyed through storytelling, painting, and other activities that speak to their hearts.
As students mature, new levels of experience take place in each subject. Where the nature studies of kindergarten lead to interest in observing the plant kingdom in 5th grade, by the 8th grade students are ready and excited to delve into deeper scientific study. This holds true for all academic subjects.
What Sets Us Apart:
- The curriculum follows a block schedule, where one main academic area is taught for a period of several weeks.
- The morning begins with a two hour main lesson period, allowing students to delve deeply into academic subjects.
- Taught by specialty teachers, afternoons are devoted to activities such as practical arts, music, Eurythmy, a form of movement to speech and sound, and foreign languages. Other specialty subjects include orchestra beginning in 4th grade, gardening, woodworking, handwork, modeling, and drama.
- The class teacher ideally takes the children from grades 1 through 8, teaching most main lesson subjects.
- Textbooks are not used. Instead, the teacher creates the lesson, and the children make their own books for each subject, recording and illustrating the substance of their lessons. These books serve as an artistic and lifelong record of accomplishment and development.
- Two foreign languages are taught.
- Music permeates all that takes place at Sunrise School of Miami. Singing is a daily occurrence, and musical instruments abound, progressing from simple flutes in the first grade to the recorder in 3rd, to the violin or cello in the 5th.
- All four math operations are introduced through activities such as clapping games and stories in the first grade, and progress into more concrete concepts as the children age.