Science

The study of science in the Lower School grows naturally out of the child’s innate curiosity and sense of wonder about the world. Our program seeks to give our students a delight in God’s creation and to teach them to see the footprints of the Creator in all its aspects. Much of this study will be experiential and hands-on—collecting colored leaves in the fall, charting plant growth, building simple machines, classifying insects, gathering and identifying various rocks and minerals, building a working model of a volcano, and designing roller coasters to observe physical laws. Such activities provide opportunities for students to learn the skills and employ the tools of science: observation, gathering and classifying data, making hypotheses and testing them through experimentation.

 

 

Knowledge Building on Knowledge

Complementing this experiential approach and adding order and structure to their acquisition of scientific knowledge, the students read books, watch videos, write papers, and make presentations on the various topics they study. Based on E.D.Hirsch’s Core Knowledge sequence, the curriculum features a coherent progression of topics and units, “knowledge building on knowledge,” that grow in depth and difficulty as the student matures.