What Do We Do?

 

While the standard grade-appropriate subjects are covered, they are considered the foundation, not the ceiling, for our curriculum. The children are encouraged to reach beyond that core knowledge and to explore their particular interests as far and as deeply as possible.

Our primary goal is to provide each of our children with an individualized program that is designed to meet his/her educational, social and emotional needs in a flexible, noncompetitive and respectful environment.

 

We offer the following subjects:

 

• ART
pencil, charcoal, water colors, acrylics, sculpture (often as part of a research project of the child's choosing)

• BOOK GROUP
some of the books we have read are "The Cay," "A Wrinkle in Time," "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," "The Ear, the Eye and the Arm," "The Bridge to Terabithia" and "The Wolves of Willoughby Chase" (younger group) and "The Giver," "Out of the Dust," "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time," "Over Sea, Under Stone" and "The Power of One" (older group), "Where the Red Fern Grows," "The Number Devil"

• COMMUNITY SERVICE

projects have included making care packages for our servicepeople overseas (Red Cross/Elks Club), writing letters of hope to prisoners of conscience around the world (Amnesty International), writing letters in Spanish to children in a Baja orphanage (Corazon de Vida), cleaning up areas of the Ballona Wetlands (Friends of the Ballona Wetlands) and making challenging edible toys for at-risk rescue chimpanzees (Wildlife Waystation), planning and carrying out a bake sale whose proceeds were sent to help animals lost in Hurricane Katrina

• CREATIVE WRITING
poetry, journal-writing, stream-of-consciousness, prose on various topics

• DEBATE
Should a more technologically advanced society share its knowledge with a newly discovered and less advanced one? Should a country invade an aggressor country to keep it from invading another, less powerful country?

• DRAMA
the children work on every aspect of putting on a play and have presented works as diverse as original works, "Midsummer Night's Dream," scenes from "Macbeth," "Peter Pan," "Member of the Wedding," "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Importance of Being Earnest" to Monty Python sketches and songs from "Oliver!"

• FIELD TRIPS
we have enjoyed behind-the-scenes tours of the Fleetwood motorhome factory, the California Room of the Natural History Museum, an IMAX projection room, Heritage Square Museum, various dance and performance art programs, a desalination plant in the desert, Union Station, the John Drescher Planetarium, the Griffith Observatory and the Co-op, plus trips to Sacramento, Hearst Castle, Nextel's NextFest, Astrocamp, the Armand Hammer Museum and sailing with Voyages of Discovery

• GRAMMAR
spelling, vocabulary, parts of speech, parts of a sentence, diagramming, punctuation, Greek and Latin roots

• HISTORY OF LITERATURE
we have studied the "Legend of Gilgamesh," "The Mahabharata" "Beowulf," the Egyptian Book of the Dead

• GUEST SPEAKERS
we have hosted an airplane builder, Disney Imagineer, photographer, astrologer, movie post-production sound engineer, Vietnam veteran, ornithologist, various musicians

• JAPANESE
by popular demand!

• LATIN
vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing and a look at ancient Rome and the Romans

• MATH
individualized

• P.E.
regularly scheduled basketball and soccer classes, yoga, swimming, bowling, hiking

• SCIENCE
biology, anatomy, astronomy, physics, chemistry, earth and environmental science

• SOCIAL STUDIES
geography and history of our world, with occasional conversations about current events