Elementary Class (grades 1 through 6)
Features of the Elementary Level:
- UK Children’s Hospital Mural that LMS Students Helped Create
- Hands-on learning: continued use of materials to learn concepts until child transitions to abstract learning
- Individualized instruction: lessons are one-on-one or in small groups
- Responsibility: continued reinforcement of the self-direction for starting and finishing work, completing homework, and participating in classroom activities, discussion, and group decisions
In the Elementary Class, students work both on individual and group lessons, making work choices and completing assignments. The lessons and corresponding projects, presentations and assignments completed by the children focus on one or more curricular areas, including math, language, history, geography, and science. Science, history and geography units follow a 3-year cycle of units. Science includes performing hands-on experiments and learning the scientific method; science projects are done by students in the upper grades.
The art portion of the curriculum for elementary students includes both design and drawing, with projects in pencil, ink, paint, oil pastels, and clay. In addition to these formal art lessons and lessons in art history, projects relying on arts and crafts complement the history, geography, and science units.
The music lessons for the Elementary Class include elements of music theory, voice, movement and dance, Orff percussion instruments for grades 1 through 6, and recorders for children in grades 3-6. The children participate in musical performances at the end of each semester.
The elementary students learn Spanish in small groups. The emphasis in these lessons is on vocabulary, conversation, and introduction to grammar and written work. Read more about the mural pictured above.