Welcome to CONQUESTS
an exciting new educational paradigm!
What is CONQUESTS?
Read on to learn more about each item:
Create – activating the right side of the brain
- Music: Develop and express musicianship skills through instrumental and vocal play.
- Art: Develop and express Art skills through hands-on projects modeled after the grand masters’ modus operandi.
- Performance Arts: Create characters, improvise and project professionalism on stage using proven performance techniques that will boost confidence.
- Craft projects designed to create beautiful, and usable projects through sewing, knitting, crochet, and needlework, etc.
- Creating with the use of technology: Clay-mation, animation, movie making, editing, sound, lighting, photography, and the use of software.
Outreach – learning to serve
- Participate in community service projects, including developing companionship with the elderly and infirm.
- Peer mentorship from students at a higher grade level or experience to encourage and strengthen each other.
- Developing effective spiritual leadership in missions and evangelism with a focus on salvation and service.
- Synergize the home and the school creating congruency and consistency by hosting quarterly parent seminars.
Nurture – teaching sustainability and stewardship
- Foster the reverence for nature and humanity inherent in the young child.
- Students will take daily care of the campus animals.
- Each grade will be responsible for caring for the school garden, orchard, or farm daily.
- Students will be responsible for cleaning and caring for their classrooms.
- Green week. A school-wide cross curricular learning experience on conservation.
- Annual fundraiser to support conservation.
Query – Differentiated Instruction across the curriculum
- Embracing the developmental model of the growing child and awaken each child’s full and unique potential.
- Taking learning beyond the textbook so students understand how what they are learning applies to the world around them.
- A variety of assessment techniques utilized according to students’ unique learning needs.
- With teachers as facilitators, students take pride in work that is their own, learning in new and individual ways.
- Every subject taught is within the context of a broader vision. How does everything learned connect to the world we live in?
- Students are not required to stay within a grade for individual core subjects. Children who excel in one area, may move ahead. Students needing more time, have the opportunity to reinforce the concepts.
Understand – instilling a sense of community
- Meeting occurs as a community in the chapel at the start of each day. Welcome, pray, and pledge.
- Teachers meet individually with each student for a couple of minutes each day to “check-in”.
- Intentional and focused Bible studies, including personal and group prayer time.
- Pathfinder/Adventurer classes, part of the curriculum, focus on working towards honors and take part in church organized activities.
- Buddy systems between students in different grades. Cross-age pals meet monthly building solid relationships with both younger and older students.
Experience – the power of directed play
- Activities such as water play, woodwork, building, treehouse time, sand play, and outdoor art are available to students every day.
- Play activities are designed to optimize learning, collaboration, and enjoyment.
- Games of strategy are encouraged such as chess, checkers, mancala, and hopscotch.
Solve – using education to make real changes
- Napa Christian is a STREAM school, developing thinking, reasoning, teamwork, investigative, and creative skills in Science, Technology, Robotics, Engineering, Arts, and Math.
- Students are taught authentic STREAM practices.
- The campus is designed to allow exploratory thinking and experimentation to take place easily, with limited controls.
- Students are encouraged to solve problems which can then be applied to the community as a whole, and to all areas of their own lives.
Thrive – making health a lifetime priority
- Sustaining a close relationship with God is woven into every strand of the hidden and tangible curriculum.
- PE lessons include a variety of sports and climbing activities to optimize strength and fitness.
- Healthy food practices including balanced lunch boxes and snacks, take part in cooking classes.
- Experiential play will include digging, climbing, and outdoor activities such as archery and mud play.
- Life-skills are an integral part of the weekly schedule:
- Cider pressing, cooking outdoors, apple pressing and drying, leaf raking, birdhouse building, pruning and mulching roses, broom-making, bees, compost bins, tool identification and maintenance, canning fruit, pickling vegetables, basket -weaving, wilderness survival, first-aid, etc.
- Learning how to rest and disconnect from technology and other daily stresses.
Soar – going beyond what’s expected
- STREAM develops a set of thinking, reasoning, teamwork, investigative, and creative skills that students can use in all areas of their lives.
- Addressing real social, economic, and environmental problems to seek solutions using flexible processes that take students from identifying a problem to creating and developing a solution using engineering design processes.
- The path to learning is open ended, within constraints. Work is hands-on and collaborative, and decisions about solutions are student-generated. Students communicate to share ideas and redesign their prototypes as needed.
- Science and math are not isolated subjects, but work together to solve problems, adding relevance to concepts.
- Our campus has a project room available which can be used to manifest concept mastery.