Education is the key to unlocking a world of possibilities
Magnify your beginning
Elementary School
At St. Mary’s Academy, we recognize that school is your young child’s most significant experience outside of the home. It is where life-long friendships are made. It is where your child’s questions, ideas, and curiosity drive our inquiry-based learning model.
Children at this age crave familiarity and structure and have an innate drive for independent learning. Our instructional methods include a variety of multi-sensory strategies that integrate into the diverse learning styles of all students.
SMA helps students establish a solid foundation through the development of students’ social, emotional, self-help skills, and academic skills. We use a variety of programs, approaches, and strategies to meet individual student needs.’
Elementary School Curriculum
PK-3rd Grades
The primary and early elementary years are times when students begin forming friendships for the first time. It is also where your child will become excited about being in a class with his/her peers to learn and play. St. Mary’s wants to develop life-long learners who are excited to learn. Our curriculum develops each child’s academic, cognitive, and physical behavior.
At this age, our students begin to build physical and academic stamina. They are developing gross motor skills as well as beginning the development of fine motor skills. They are beginning to read from what they hear and read and not solely from what they do and see. They are beginning to build their sight word vocabulary. They are recognizing numbers, letters, and patterns. They are building a sense of time by understanding hours, days, weeks, months, and seasons.
PK-3rd Grades Curriculum Highlights
Literacy
Language Arts
Math
Science
Social Studies
Religion
Enrich & Explore
Elementary School Curriculum
4th - 5th Grades
The late elementary years are when students begin forming active social and emotional lives for the first time; they wrestle with their individuality when they want nothing else but to be like everyone else. It is at this age that students begin pondering more abstract ideas. While they still struggle to separate fact from opinion, they can better organize thoughts and planning methodologies.
At SMA, we are helping our students build strong executive functioning skills. Teachers help students develop organization, note-taking, planning skills, and setting goals and objectives. Our students are developing academic stamina and begin to apply it to long-term problem-solving skills. Through challenging Socratic seminars, our students start to argue more than one side of an issue. Our students explore ideas, meaning, and information found in text. Teachers facilitate insightful discussions about the text they read, making text-to-text, text-to-world, and text-to-self connections.
4th-5th Grades Curriculum Highlights
Literacy
Language Arts
Math
Science
Social Studies
Religion
Enrich & Explore
Elementary School Formation In Faith
As a Catholic school, we give special attention to ensure that all academic and formative efforts integrate in such a way that the light of Christ’s teaching illuminates everything students learn. The religious dimension of the school is expressed through the celebration of Christian values in Word and Sacrament, service to others, and in a community animated by faith, hope, and charity. Lower School students serve the local community through ageappropriate service and works of mercy projects. These projects focus on the material and physical needs of the hungry, poor, homeless, sick, and less fortunate.
Sacramental Celebration
Second-grade religion instruction includes sacramental preparation for both the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. Students make both sacraments through their parish church. Parents should register with the parish during the summer prior to their child entering second grade. St. Mary’s does hold a special Mass in late Spring to celebrate all new communicants. New communicants wear their first communion gowns or pants/shirt/tie/suit attire.
