What an Academic Day Looks Like at HCS: Get Ready for Adventure

  • Be prepared for any weather. Children might get cold or wet if not properly attired. They might get dirty, too.
  • The day opens at 8:30 in prayer, devotion, music, and Spanish in the big room while middle and high schoolers have their first class.
  • Children will head to their classrooms and read in blocks of literature, biography, science, history, and faith. When a change of pace is needed, they will head outdoors for some gardening or nature study, listen to the term's composer, or work on notebooks.
  • Independent readers will read books from their classroom library to themselves or in groups while children who need reading instruction receive it.
  • At some point in the morning, they will make discoveries in math with manipulatives, notebook what they know, and work up to mental math using a living teaching approach.
  • Children need to bring their own lunches as specified by their teacher. Sometimes, we eat outdoors.
  • Having worked hard in the morning, lighter subjects are for the afternoon with a short block of time for play outdoors or a walk.
  • Notebooking is how we assess what children learn. Children draw or write their favorite memories and what they understand in sketchbooks, composition books, and specially dedicated notebooks.
  • The school day ends at 2:10. We send them home with very little homework in the elementary years and below, if any, because this style of education is quite rigorous. Children from schools like HCS tend to use their free time to play imaginatively, read books that interest them, spend time outdoors, ask many questions, and talk to friends and family about what they learned.
  • As students "cross the double doors" and enter high school, they take with them the habits they have learned in the early years. They still read, narrate, notebook, do copywork/studied dictation/recitation, etc. with emphasis on independent learning, traditional coursework with living books, homework, and opportunities beyond the classroom such as mentoring, dual enrollment, and vocational certification.