Academics
At Minnehaha Academy's Elementary School, small class sizes and hands-on, experiential learning sets your child on a strong foundation. Each grade level builds upon previous material in an intentional way preparing your child for future success.
Discover how your child will learn and grow as he or she progresses from kindergarten to grade 5, surrounded by a caring community of teachers dedicated to cultivating your child’s potential.
Kindergarten
The full-day Kindergarten program provides an enriching Christian environment for students to experience a wide variety of activities in academics and socialization. One size does not fit all, which is why we use various approaches to challenge and encourage your child. We believe children learn best when they are engaged in meaningful activities that promote cognitive, social, emotional, physical, spiritual growth, and well-being.
Brain Boosting SMART Program
Kindergarten children at Minnehaha Academy benefit from current brain research in our SMART program. Each day they have fun moving their bodies in specific activities that challenge their visual, motor, auditory, sensory, and proprioceptive systems – ultimately boosting their brain power.
Literacy
Kindergarten is where the joy of reading and writing takes off! Your child will learn about fiction and non-fiction, and poetry, while honing their reading, writing, and grammar skills. They will discover how writers write and how to write their own personal narratives. All of this learning takes place using a hands-on interactive workshop approach, where they will participate in activities with their classmates to learn about the many places words can take them. Using phonics and integrating all of the senses, reading becomes natural and fun.
Math
Kindergarten presents foundational mathematical concepts through songs, rhymes, and hands-on activities using Singapore Math. Students at this level are learning number sense, measurement, geometry, simple algebra, data analysis, probability, and problem solving. Students are also encouraged to recognize connections between mathematical topics, and understand how concepts build on one another.
Science
Science is all about exploration in kindergarten. Your child will learn more about the world around them through hands-on activities throughout the year. We integrate literacy and science with our in-depth study of penguins. In our penguin unit, students learn the beginning steps of writing a research paper together as a class. Science themes include weather and seasons, animals and their habitats, plant life and environmental awareness, and there’s an in-depth study on the continent of Australia that focuses on geography and culture.
Social Studies
Kindergarteners learn about their place in the world in a variety of social studies units that include community, famous African Americans, map skills, Minnesota, and more.
Bible
Conveying the love and goodness of God is the primary goal of the Christian Schools International Bible curriculum. Through stories of God’s working in the lives of Old and New Testament people, students learn to recognize God’s work and His plan in their own lives. All Elementary School students and teachers meet together weekly for a chapel service.
Specialists
Beyond our core curriculum, kindergarten students work with specialists in art, library, music, physical education, and Spanish. If you prefer individual music training, private piano or string lessons can be scheduled.
First Grade
Literacy
Your child will broaden his or her horizons as deeper study of reading, writing, and grammar happens in workshop-style lessons. Topics like phonics, understanding textual conventions and comprehension are applied through choice-based reading activities and guided reading. Your child will work on their own piece of writing during an in-depth writer's workshop.
Math
First Grade emphasizes the foundational topics of numbers, measurement, geometry, simple algebra, data analysis, probability, and problem solving, while also introducing basic facts, place value, and mental math. Students master number bonds, a hands-on approach to learning the relationships between numbers. Students are taught place value using manipulatives and pictorial representations.
Science
Social Studies
Each grade level studies four key content strands during their social studies block: Economics, History, Geography and Citizenship & Government.
Bible
Conveying the love and goodness of God is the primary goal of the Christian Schools International Bible curriculum. Through stories of God’s working in the lives of Old and New Testament people, students learn to recognize God’s work and His plan in their own lives. Learning activities include flannel graphs, memory work, role-playing, storytelling, and discussion. All Lower School students and teachers meet together weekly for a chapel service.
Second Grade
Literacy
Your child will discover the imaginative world of folktales, fables, and fairytales. They will uncover the art of letter writing. They will dig deep into the process of how writers work, practicing the skill themselves in a variety of ways over the course of the year. Reading, writing, and grammar skills will be reinforced throughout lessons and your child will practice their literacy fluency and contextual understanding in all that they read and write.
Math
The building blocks of math are covered in second grade, including numbers and operations, measurement, geometry, simple algebra, data analysis, probability, and problem solving. Your child will also learn more advanced basic facts, place value, and mental math skills. Communicating their thinking in a variety of ways, your child will develop a higher level of skill of real-world problem solving using addition, subtraction, multiplication and measurement. This is the year where initial connections between fractions and geometric representations are made and second graders develop a basic understanding of adding and subtracting fractions.
Science
Social Studies
Each grade level studies four key content strands during their social studies block: Economics, History, Geography and Citizenship & Government.
Bible
Conveying the love and goodness of God is the primary goal of the Christian Schools International Bible curriculum. Students study Creation through Kings and the Prophets in the Old Testament, and Jesus’ birth, ministry, teachings, death and resurrection in the New Testament. Through stories of God’s working in the lives of Old and New Testament people, students learn to recognize God’s work and His plan in their own lives. All Lower School students and teachers meet together weekly for a chapel service.
Third Grade
Literacy
From author studies to learning how writers work, biography to memoir, your child will dive deep into reading and writing in a workshop format. New skills in reading, writing, and grammar will encourage your young reader to learn more about the writing process, join a book club, and participate in guided reading.
Math
Concepts learned from kindergarten through second grade will help your child as they dig into the standard algorithms for multi-digit multiplication and division with remainders. Additionally, your child will develop fluency with the bar model, a pictorial technique for keeping track of what is known and unknown in a word problem. Bar models are visual ways to solve problems typically considered algebra problems, but without requiring the abstract formalism. By the end of the year, your child will be able to express mathematical ideas though representations and make connections between mathematical ideas and concepts.
Science
Structures of life, water and climate, matter and energy will come alive for your child as they participate in hands-on activities using the scientific method.
Social Studies
Each grade level studies four key content strands during their social studies block: economics, history, citizenship, and government. Topics of study include financial literacy, communities, geography, and mapping.
Bible
Conveying the love and goodness of God is the primary goal of the Christian Schools International Bible curriculum. Through stories of God’s working in the lives of Old and New Testament people, students learn to recognize God’s work and His plan in their own lives. All Lower School students and teachers meet together weekly for a chapel service.
Fourth Grade
Literacy
Your child will grow their skills in grammar, word structure and usage, sentence building, vocabulary, study skills, composition, and literature appreciation through workshops and independent reading and novel studies.
Our Writing Workshop provides an opportunity for your child to develop their voice and skill as a writer through units of study. Units explored during the year will include memoir, personal narrative, non-narrative, poetry, realistic fiction and others. Your child will follow the writing process and take their ideas from the earliest stage through to publication. Monthly writing celebrations will honor the work of our young authors.
Word mastery is honed through spelling skills - discovering concepts and patterns, emphasizing high frequency words, proofreading, dictionary skills, and word mastery. Communication skills, such as public speaking, are fostered during the year across the curricular areas.
Math
Fourth grade begins the move away from arithmetic toward more difficult problem solving, with an emphasis on computing and problem solving with fractions and decimals. Your child will grow in their math skills as they are introduced to negative numbers, functions, coordinate graphs, angles, lines, perimeter, and area. Your child will learn to express mathematical ideas through representations and make connections between mathematical ideas and concepts . These topics are developed with an emphasis on problem solving, skill consolidation, and a deep understanding in preparation for algebra.
Science
Your child will dive into science with hands-on activities applying the scientific method throughout the year. Energy and electromagnetism, living systems, and the sun, moon, and stars are explored in depth by our fourth grade students.
Social Studies
Each grade level studies four key content strands during their social studies block: economics, history, geography, and citizenship and government. Topics of study include states and capitals, regions of the United States, and Minnesota History.
JA Biztown
Your child will study business, economics and free-enterprise through hands-on lessons and simulations by JA Biztown. The unit concludes with a full day trip to Biztown where students, accepting jobs such as CEO, CFO, scientist, DJ, and mayor, participate in a simulated economy. STEM skills are integrated during the experience through activities such as alternative energy exploration and research, water quality testing, weighing, measuring, and accounting. While exploring STEM careers, students actively use STEM skills such as employing the scientific process, thinking critically, problem solving, using math, and collaborating as a team.
Bible
Conveying the love and goodness of God is the primary goal of the Christian Schools International Bible curriculum. Through stories of God’s working in the lives of Old and New Testament people, students learn to recognize God’s work and His plan in their own lives. All Lower School students and teachers meet together weekly for a chapel service.
Fifth Grade
Literacy
Reading, writing, and grammar are all taught using a workshop approach, where students learn to apply new skills while participating in authentic literacy activities. In the reading workshop, daily lessons on topics like textual analysis, advanced comprehension strategies and independence as a lifelong reader are applied through choice-based reading activities and book clubs. During writing workshop, students learn how authors can choose to share information as they examine, and then try to write, new genres.
Math
Fifth Grade curriculum emphasizes fractions, decimals, ratios and proportional reasoning, model drawing, probability, and algebraic thinking with expressions, equations and inequalities. Students at this level are able to communicate their thinking in a variety of ways, including written expression, giving them opportunities to apply previous learning to solve complex, authentic problems in creative ways. Fifth Graders are expected to express mathematical ideas through representations (bar models) and make connections between mathematical ideas and concepts.
Science
Each grade level offers three science units: Earth, Life, and Physical Science. Two of the units are taught through guided inquiry, using hands-on experiments and activities that allow students to learn through doing. The third unit is taught as an integrated non-fiction literacy unit, teaching students how to ever more effectively use non-fiction, informational text while exploring science content.
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Motion, Force, and Models
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Soil, Rocks, and Landforms
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Environments
Social Studies
Each grade level studies four key content strands during their social studies block: Economics, History, Geography and Citizenship & Government. Some units include:
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United States History: Early Peoples through Revolutionary War
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Map Skills
JA Biztown
Students study business, economics and free-enterprise through hands-on lessons and simulations. The unit concludes with a full day trip to Biztown where students, accepting jobs such as CEO, CFO, scientist, DJ, and mayor, participate in a simulated economy. STEM skills are integrated during the experience through activities such as alternative energy exploration and research, water quality testing, weighing, measuring, and accounting. While exploring STEM careers students actively use STEM skills such as employing the scientific process, thinking critically, problem solving, using math, and collaborating as a team.
Bible
Students have weekly lessons in Bible that include scripture readings, constructive discussions and Bible memory. Prayer and community building is an important aspect of spiritual formation as well.
Eagle Bluff
Fifth graders take an overnight trip to Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center in southern Minnesota. During the stay, they study academic content as well as expand their life skills. Students are encouraged to grow in environmental awareness as well as respect and personal responsibility through a program of thoughtful stewardship and choices. Students connect with Pre-Columbian studies as they learn about the Oneota People who populated the vicinity from AD 900 to around 1650 or 1700. Our learners extend their knowledge of westward movement as they become settlers of the midwestern prairies, spending time at a log cabin trying their hand at fire-making, cooking, cleaning, handwork, and recreational activities.
Students extend their life science studies as they dissect owl pellets to discover and reassemble their contents. Our students learn about the raptors that populate Minnesota’s skies as they view and interact with live raptors. Our students also experience personal growth at the top of the ropes course, as they discover their own mettle and tenacity.
Family Project
As they prepare to enter Middle School, fifth graders dive into an in-depth study of their family heritage. The Family Project gives them the opportunity to learn about their own family and the historical events connected with it, while working on skills of researching, writing, drawing, graph-making, interviewing, making presentations and managing their time. Each student completes a research paper that integrates an event from American history and the impact it had on his or her family. Students collect family memoirs in a letter writing project, conduct interviews to gather family history, and design and construct 3-D landmarks, homes, flora or fauna. Then, in a celebration of our diverse heritages, we gather together to enjoy a potluck of grand proportions as each family shares a memorable family dish. Following the feast, families have the opportunity to enjoy displays designed and presented by our fifth graders.