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Home » Lower School » The Beginning School
Catherine Grider and Suzy Ebalo teach Charles Wright's Beginning School, a full-day pre-kindergarten program that admits up to 16 four-year-old students each year. The Beginning School is literally the beginning of school at CWA. During their first year as Tarriers, students discover the possibilities and joys of learning and of being a good community member. The classroom environment is nurturing, supportive and playful.
The Beginning School curriculum is rich in language arts and mathematics, and filled with opportunities to explore, discover, create, pretend, sing and play. Each activity has specific learning objectives and these objectives weave together to promote significant skill acquisition and learning.
CWA's Beginning School students are also taught by nine different learning specialists in the Lower School.
Judy Herrington, the Lower School’s music teacher, leads weekly Beginning School music classes filled with song, dance and laughter. In the music room, children experience and practice basic music skills by singing, playing instruments, learning games and practicing movement. They are introduced to the skill of reading music as they discover how a symbol can become a clap, drum beat, an instrument sound, a jump or a wink. Learning songs for the Lower School’s weekly town meeting gatherings is an important way Beginning Schoolers become members of the Charles Wright community.
Chaplain Mike Moffitt holds chapel weekly with Beginning Schoolers, kindergartners and first graders. Every month they learn about a different human virtue through stories, activities, videos and more. This year the nine virtues are goodness, compassion, thankfulness, faith, courage, charity, patience, truthfulness and hope.
Mary Beth Cole, the Lower School’s learning specialist, works with the admissions team to assess students readiness for the Beginning School through classroom and one-on-one observations, as well as testing. During the school year she supports students in Beginning School by working in the classroom and reading or practicing the alphabet with students. She collaborates with the classroom teachers to find remediation strategies for students who need extra help or accelerated materials for highly capable students.
Tyler Francis and Mindy McGrath, Lower School physical education teachers, meet with Beginning Schoolers twice a week to learn and practice fundamental motor skills, spatial awareness, and the basic rules of games and sports. The Beginning School also has recess twice a day on a playground designed especially for children their size and restricted to the school’s youngest students during the first half of the year. After school, many Beginning School students participate in the fall Running Club.
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Candy Anderson, known to all as Miz Candy, teaches visual arts in the Lower School. For Beginning School students, art is very much about process, not product. Students explore working with different art materials and enjoy the creative process of discovering what happens. Through art Beginning Schoolers learn to identify objects, lines, colors, shapes, textures, forms and patterns. Miz Candy teaches that art is a way of seeing, and that artists see things differently than other people because they know how to use what she calls their "art eyes." Art is about noticing how things look with both your normal vision and your artistic vision. When you use your "art eyes", you see what could be, and the possibilities are endless!
Gabriel Newton, the Lower School’s science specialist, leads Beginning Schoolers in weekly science labs that focus on nurturing a child's natural love of science, discovering scientific concepts through play, teaching toward scientific inquiry, and providing a hands-on, interactive learning experience that teaches collaboration and teamwork. Labs ebb and flow with the energy and interests of the students and the topics covered in their homeroom. While learning about electricity recently, we found Beginning Schoolers playing with balloons and static electricity (creating a magnetic electroscope), experimenting with a leyden jar, and building an electromagnet.
Deborah Baldwin is the Lower School librarian. She meets with Beginning Schoolers weekly to introduce them to great books and help them begin to see themselves as both readers and authors. Beginning School students develop their reading comprehension skills by listening to stories read out-loud in the library and develop pre-reading skills as they learn to identify repetitive words and patterns in books. Ms. Baldwin also plans responsive activities like art projects that connect to the stories she reads to Beginning Schoolers and helps them find books to take home from the library to share with their families.
Plinio Gutierrez-Delgado teaches Spanish to Beginning Schoolers twice a week. The children delight in listening to stories, singing songs, playing games, and creating puppet shows. They discover culture through arts and craft projects and holiday celebrations. With an emphasis on listening, speaking, and basic vocabulary development, Beginning Schoolers experience the joy of exploring the Spanish language.
Catherine Grider and Suzy Ebalo teach Charles Wright's Beginning School, a full-day pre-kindergarten program that admits up to 16 four-year-old students each year. The Beginning School is literally the beginning of school at CWA. During their first year as Tarriers, students discover the possibilities and joys of learning and of being a good community member. The classroom environment is nurturing, supportive and playful. The Beginning School curriculum is rich in language arts and mathematics, and filled with opportunities to explore, discover, create, pretend, sing and play. Each activity has specific learning objectives and these objectives weave together to promote significant skill acquisition and learning. CWA's Beginning School students are also taught by nine different learning specialists in the Lower School.
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Chaplain Mike Moffitt holds chapel weekly with Beginning Schoolers, kindergartners and first graders. Every month they learn about a different human virtue through stories, activities, videos and more. This year the nine virtues are goodness, compassion, thankfulness, faith, courage, charity, patience, truthfulness and hope. Mary Beth Cole, the Lower School’s learning specialist, works with the admissions team to assess students readiness for the Beginning School through classroom and one-on-one observations, as well as testing. During the school year she supports students in Beginning School by working in the classroom and reading or practicing the alphabet with students. She collaborates with the classroom teachers to find remediation strategies for students who need extra help or accelerated materials for highly capable students. Tyler Francis and Mindy McGrath, Lower School physical education teachers, meet with Beginning Schoolers twice a week to learn and practice fundamental motor skills, spatial awareness, and the basic rules of games and sports. The Beginning School also has recess twice a day on a playground designed especially for children their size and restricted to the school’s youngest students during the first half of the year. After school, many Beginning School students participate in the fall Running Club. Candy Anderson, known to all as Miz Candy, teaches visual arts in the Lower School. For Beginning School students, art is very much about process, not product. Students explore working with different art materials and enjoy the creative process of discovering what happens. Through art Beginning Schoolers learn to identify objects, lines, colors, shapes, textures, forms and patterns. Miz Candy teaches that art is a way of seeing, and that artists see things differently than other people because they know how to use what she calls their "art eyes." Art is about noticing how things look with both your normal vision and your artistic vision. When you use your "art eyes", you see what could be, and the possibilities are endless!Gabriel Newton, the Lower School’s science specialist, leads Beginning Schoolers in weekly science labs that focus on nurturing a child's natural love of science, discovering scientific concepts through play, teaching toward scientific inquiry, and providing a hands-on, interactive learning experience that teaches collaboration and teamwork. Labs ebb and flow with the energy and interests of the students and the topics covered in their homeroom. While learning about electricity recently, we found Beginning Schoolers playing with balloons and static electricity (creating a magnetic electroscope), experimenting with a leyden jar, and building an electromagnet.Deborah Baldwin is the Lower School librarian. She meets with Beginning Schoolers weekly to introduce them to great books and help them begin to see themselves as both readers and authors. Beginning School students develop their reading comprehension skills by listening to stories read out-loud in the library and develop pre-reading skills as they learn to identify repetitive words and patterns in books. Ms. Baldwin also plans responsive activities like art projects that connect to the stories she reads to Beginning Schoolers and helps them find books to take home from the library to share with their families. Plinio Gutierrez-Delgado teaches Spanish to Beginning Schoolers twice a week. The children delight in listening to stories, singing songs, playing games, and creating puppet shows. They discover culture through arts and craft projects and holiday celebrations. With an emphasis on listening, speaking, and basic vocabulary development, Beginning Schoolers experience the joy of exploring the Spanish language.