Also essential to Geneva kindergarten is commitment to the fact that “All Truth is God’s Truth.” This is equally true of Goodness and Beauty! This means we see the same virtues being applied throughout different parts of the curriculum. In art, students make a practiced habit of creating art that is beautiful while refining their motor skills. We see this emphasis also in our handwriting and cursive. They also use these skills in their math and map time. When they get better at that skill, it will effect all the different places in life where it is used – in and out of school!

As a classical Christian school, God’s Word is the basis of not only what we learn, but how. The Bible is the basis of the rules we use to correct sinful behavior, it is the form of the respectful and nurturing learning environment. We also have Bible instruction. Our bible instruction starts at Creation, and works its way through memorable Old Testament and New Testament Lessons. We require the memorization of a Geneva Credo, that give them the basics of the faith while also emphasizing character virtues like Contentment, Obedience, Self-Control, Patience, Joy, Courage, Respect, Truthfulness, and Thankfulness.

Since God’s Word is written, we must be “people of the book.” That is why we continue to emphasize direct phonics instruction using the SWR program by Wanda Sanseri. Kindergarten goes over all the letter sounds and also goes into the most common phonograms and spelling rules by the end of the year. This helps students get ready for our awesome Reading Challenge in the later grades. They also hear wonderful literature read out loud, and encourage it at home and with our reading partner volunteers.

Books read in Kindergarten include (but are by no means limited to): Froggy Goes to School, Arthur’s Off to School, Look out Kindergarten Here I come, Hive of Busy Bees, Have you Filled a Bucket Today?, Another Kind of Bee, My Mouth is a Volcano, Lacey Walker Nonstop Talker, Halfway Herbert, Two Bad Ants, The Donkey Who Carried A King, Rumpelstiltskin, and Trumpet of the Swan.

Our math education follows the age-appropriate scope and sequence of the Math-U-See Primer book, supplemented with resources taken from Saxon 1. We want our math education to inflame their natural love of math and wonder at the way God uses number to make his creation beautiful.

Major math concepts and skills include counting objects and developing numeracy, understanding place value, recognizing number names and symbols, reading and writing numerals, understanding addition and subtraction using concrete and representational models, understanding and writing operational symbols such as “+”.” –“ and “=”, addition and subtraction of select numbers, telling and writing time by hours and minutes, recognizing and drawing rectangle, squares and circles, measuring length by repeating units, using halves and fourths, skip counting by 2’s,5’s,10’s and 100’s, reading, writing and setting up word problems and last but not least, that old fashioned skill of reading a analog clock with hands and telling time by the hour and minute!

This emphasis on the “old ways” of education can be seen in little ways at this early level, and it grows each year they apprentice in the Christian Liberal Arts that are at the core of our unique educational philosophy. This begins in Kindergarten, and is completed in the Senior year with Capstone or senior Thesis. Finishing well, requires a good beginning. That is exactly what a Geneva Kindergarten is!