Academic, through play
Our Kindergarten runs on play, creativity, exploration, puzzles, games and challenges, and it is more academically deliberate than it looks. Literacy is taught structurally: decoding, fluency with sight words, the patterns inside words and the patterns inside sounds. A five-year-old experiences it as a game, yet underneath it is a phonics, literacy and math education program.
The question was whether worms can feel rain. By eleven there’s a chart on the wall, three theories, and a plan to check again tomorrow.
This is what literacy looks like at five.
Confidence is grown, not taught
A child who is known, and whose questions are taken seriously, becomes willing to try things and take risks. That willingness is the most useful thing a five-year-old can carry into first grade, and it is what this crucible of a year is for.
A boy who wouldn’t speak in a group in September reads his own story aloud in November. Nobody made him. He asked.
Confidence isn’t taught. It’s grown, in the right conditions.
In a Kindergarten week
Kindergarten at Knox is genuinely academic. It just doesn’t look like a worksheet.
Reading and mathematics
At each child’s own pace, with no timetable a five-year-old has to keep up with.
Science and discovery
Led by what the children are curious about, often bringing the natural world into the classroom.
Working with other people
Sharing, disagreeing well and working alongside someone else, taught on purpose rather than left to chance.
A teacher who knows them
Every child in the room, known as quickly as possible.
“He has grown more in two months at Knox than he did all year at his previous school”
— Knox parent, Kindergarten
And then, first grade
The habits built here carry straight into Lower School. Questions worth chasing, work that lasts longer than a lesson, and an adult nearby who knows what you are ready for.
Stories from inside the school
A window into daily school life. What our students are working on, musings about the joys of teaching our learners, and exciting happenings within the school and community.
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