Student Life
One childhood. Live it fully.
The school year turns through seasonal festivals the whole community shares. Festivals and lantern light, gardens and woods, music and handwork, friendships that last for years. They give children a felt sense of time, beauty, and belonging. This is childhood lived fully, not rushed through.
The world as a classroom
As they grow, students take on class trips and overnight adventures that connect their learning to the wider world and draw a class closer together. It culminates in the eighth grade's week-long capstone trip to Puerto Rico, a milestone students remember for life.
Arts, music, and creativity
Singing, instruments, painting, handwork, woodwork, and theater are part of every day here, not a special occasion. Children grow up making things with their hands and their voices: performing class plays, joining ensembles, and discovering what they can create.
Games, movement, and sport
Movement runs through the whole curriculum, from the earliest grades onward, because coordination, confidence, and teamwork are built the same way everything else is built here: by doing. In grades one through five, movement is taught through games rich in imagery, story, and rhythm, developing body awareness, personal space, and the joy of moving together.
Outside, every day
Children are outdoors every day on our wooded campus, more than six acres in the heart of Decatur. They play in the Glade, walk the trails, and work in the garden, planting flowers, caring for chickens, and tending the compost, forming a lasting connection to the natural world. A current school effort is expanding the garden.
A community of families
None of this happens without the families who make this school what it is. Parents run the Holiday Fair, fill the workshops, and refresh the classrooms on work days, and many find their closest friendships here.
What this looks like in practice
Student life here runs by the seasons rather than the clock. The year turns through festivals the whole community shares, and the days hold singing, instruments, painting, handwork, woodwork, and theater. Movement is woven through the whole curriculum, taught in the early grades through games full of imagery, story, and rhythm. Children are outdoors every day, playing in the Glade, walking the trails, and working in the garden.
Time outside is part of every day. Children walk the trails, plant in the garden, and play in the Glade on the wooded campus—more than six acres in Decatur. That rhythm carries home: your child sleeps better and talks about what they made. Singing, handwork, and class plays are daily, not special occasions.
