Our Curriculum is unique!

At our heart, is a curriculum developed by the Center for Redemptive Education (CRE). The CRE exists to articulate, cultivate, demonstrate and facilitate the quest to align with God’s design for teaching and learning, using an approach that is Biblical, Relational, Integral and Experiential. We are excited to be partnered with a curriculum developer who shares our values and honors God’s charge to parents to raise up Godly children.

BIBLICAL

Redemptive Education IS biblical - not just a Bible verse stuck to its surface. Everything we do and every person we encounter is envisioned through a biblical worldview. Decisions are made and lessons delivered with God and biblical truth at the center of it all. All truth is God’s truth.

RELATIONAL

A relational approach to teaching and learning honors and respects the child, family, teachers, community, the culture, the world and the Creator. This explains our multi-age classrooms and nurturing of each child. We teach students to be disciples and to honor God in our work.

INTEGRAL

Rather than studying one subject at a time as a disjointed part of a whole, integral teaching & learning is more authentic - we seek real connections using a theme-based approach and teach children to wonder and ask questions that really matter.

EXPERIENTIAL

Experiential learning honors nature, people, ideas, literature, mathematics, the arts, science, the material and the immaterial, teaching the whole child using all senses. Our indoor and outdoor spaces promote learning and study in an immersive environment. We are doers!

Curriculum up close

Overview

Each year begins with an age-appropriate study of the fact of Creation and the nature of the Creator. There are two years of thematic units (3 years for middle school) of curriculum developed for each grade cycle. Each year of curriculum is driven by a conceptual theme or “Big Idea” (see below). Every unit in every year features Biblical content interwoven with and illuminating math, science, history, language arts (reading/writing/speaking), visual and performing arts, and PE. ​

Our teachers “loop” with the same students for two years in the elementary grades. This class arrangement provides stability and continuity for each classroom and allows the teacher to really know how to support each student well.

Multi-year thematic cycles

  • Sample topics include: communities, cultures familiar and unfamiliar, living and non-living things, biomes, water cycle, habitats, patterns in nature, Impressionist artists and composers.

    Sample scriptures: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted.” (Ps. 34:18) “Let the little children come to Me!” (Matthew 19:14).

  • Sample topics include: migration, inventors, metamorphosis, nocturnal creatures, design and construction, camouflage, rock cycle, mysteries in nature and in literature, writing a mystery story, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

    Sample scriptures: “The secret things belong to the Lord, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.” (Deut. 29:29) “Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.” (1 Sam 16:7) 

  • Sample topics include: What is “culture”? Native American cultures, European cultures, Asian cultures, African cultures, early US history, the push West, Asia, Africa, Europe, Arctic/Antarctica, Eastern and Western story forms, Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Smetana’s “Die Moldau,” Hokusai’s “The Big Wave,” the science of snow, explorers and explorations.

    Sample scripture: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our sins from us!” (Ps. 103:12) “As the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man!” (Matthew 24:28)

  • Sample books include: A Kingdom Far and Clear - Cold Case Christianity for Kids apologetics series- Prince Caspian - The Silver Chair - The Hobbit - A Wrinkle in Time - Moo - A Long Walk to Water - The Player King - original and/or young readers’ versions of the following six books: The Boys in the Boat - Joni - The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind - Unbroken - Hidden Figures - I am Malala - The Sword in the Stone - The Dreamer - Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare - Beowulf – A Christmas Carol – Wind in the Willows - The History of US  

    Sample topics include: 4 M’s Biblical framework for engaging with reality; identity; personality types; roles of an image-bearer; “to lead - to participate - to resist”; heroes; conflict and resolution; heat, sound, electrical conduction/resistance/insulation; the work of Stephen Gray, “father of electricity” (1666-1736) and his contemporaries; Civics; the Constitution; Christian apologetics

    Sample scriptures: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand.” (Eph. 2:10) and “Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Heb. 12:2) 

Thematic units make INTEGRAL learning possible!

An INTEGRAL curriculum is difficult to imagine because we’re so used to typical “subjects”. This graphic depicts a sample set of lessons for a K/1 unit focusing on the Creation story. The THEME is “In the Beginning.” Each “subject” area is addressed with activities that all relate to the same theme.

Our Redemptive Ed curriculum is supplemented with packaged, non-Common Core curriculum for both Math and Language Arts.

Our approach to math and language arts instruction is MASTERY-BASED. This means that we assess each child in these key areas and place them in an instruction group with other students functioning at the same level. Each group may have students from different classrooms. This approach helps ensure that every student progresses based on where they’re at which may or may not be at their current “grade” level.

For math, we use the U.S. version of the highly effective Singapore Math-based curriculum called Math in Focus that uses powerful visual models and engaging hands-on activities to develop students’ critical-thinking and problem solving skills. We supplement our math curriculum with Wild Math that utilizes natural materials and the outdoor environment.

Language Arts includes phonics-based reading, handwriting (including cursive), grammar, reading, and writing using an Orton-Gillingham based approach from Logic of English. For 2nd grade and above we use Writing and Rhetoric from Classical Academic Press.

Formal science instruction begins in 2nd grade using Engaging Science Labs, a hands-on, inquiry-based science curriculum that coincides with our Redemptive Education themes.

What does this approach look like in action?

An excerpt from “Wind From the Sea” by Amy Imbody, Founder of the Center for Redemptive Education

My leaf won! My leaf won!” a sixth-grade boy shouts. His buddies high-five him and then they all hunt for new leaves to race down the stream. “Dodge the riffle!” one of them warns, “Mine got stuck there on the rocks.” Another boy uses a long stick to dislodge his own stuck leaf which had stalled out in a pool at a bend in the stream.

Further down the creek, a girl clambers up a leaning tree trunk. She is watching a trio of students who perch on a high bank, enthusiastically poking at a pocket of scum on the water below them. “I know it’s not algae,” one confidently asserts, “I have a fish tank and when it gets algae it doesn’t look anything like this.” “Yeah, but I think it IS algae - it’s greenish.” The third students says, “No…I think it’s pollution. It’s gross. It’s got bubbles. And when I poke it, it comes apart and then goes together again - I’ve never seen algae do that…”

Who are these happy hypothesizers? Who are these leaf-racing experts? They are sixth-grade students, busy at their field work on this Tuesday morning. An hour ago, they got off the bus in a parking lot for the Reston Association. Now they are ready to conduct their usually monthly water quality tests to discover and track the nitrogen, phosphate, dissolved oxygen, pH and temperature of their assigned stream. They compile and record this data before sharing it with the Reston Association’s environmental scientists. But while they patiently wait for the chemical indicators to work their wonder in the test tubes, they do what any kid ought to have time to do: they play in the woods!

Later, their play yields academic fruit. When I ask, “How fast did the winning leaf go?” I see them pause to mentally process. One student moves his hand slowly through the air, saying, “It went about this fast.” Another says, “maybe like 15 inches per second,” while his classmate recalls, “Wait! That’s ‘rate’ like Ms. Reiter taught us in math this morning!” Her eyes take on an eager intensity as she suddenly makes the connection between “school” and “life.”

This is our Outdoor Classroom!

“This is a unique but highly effective way to learn! God made these children naturally inquisitive. All we have to do is give them time, space, tools, and some guidance. All we have to do is cooperate with God’s design. The result is deeply satisfying, to the children and to any who see them so keenly engaged with God’s beautiful work.”

– Amy Imbody, President for the Center for Redemptive Education