MKA’s earliest learners find themselves a step ahead as a result of a thoughtful program that encourages them to ask why and wonder. On their own dedicated campus, they practice reflection, build curiosity, and develop their capacity for decision-making. From the beginning of their MKA experience, students are recognized as individuals who each have a part to play in the campus community.
Pre-K - Grade 3
Growing in Leaps and Bounds
Our Primary School curriculum ignites a lifelong love of learning. We cultivate curious, confident, and capable students by fostering a joyful, inquiry-based environment. Our teachers design engaging lessons that challenge students academically while nurturing their social and emotional growth. By emphasizing critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity, we empower students to become independent learners and responsible citizens.
LEARNING AT THE GROWING EDGE
In the earliest years of learning, curiosity, confidence, and connection take root. The following hallmark programs nurture children as engaged learners, compassionate classmates, and confident communicators, setting the stage for a lifelong love of learning.
Capstone is a key third-grade project blending research, writing, and design. Students reflect on personal experiences to reimagine Brookside spaces, creating 3D models and formal proposals. Their work highlights inquiry and creativity at a final design fair.
Through the global MyMachine project, first graders use STEM+ thinking to imagine creative solutions to real-world problems. By exploring simple machines and collaborating with older students to prototype ideas, they learn that innovation is both creative and collaborative.
Students in grades one through three explore dance, music, theatre, and visual arts in a program that builds creativity, confidence, and community. These experiences connect to classroom learning and culminate in performances and exhibitions that lay the foundation for a lifelong love of the arts.
Exploring and engaging with the world beyond their classroom begins in the earliest stages for students at the Primary School. Through field trips, students gain early insight into what it means to be thoughtful, curious members of a broader community.
Students spend most of their day in their grade-level classroom, where the day begins with a Morning Meeting, rooted in the Responsive Classroom approach. Routines and teaching points included in Morning Meeting help to establish a strong classroom community, built on mutual respect and care.
MKA’s 1:1 Program teaches students to use their school-issued iPads responsibly, following safety norms. Starting in Pre-K, they use the camera to document learning and use the Seesaw app to reflect, share thoughts, highlight passions, and showcase understanding.
WHAT LEARNING LOOKS LIKE
In a Reggio Emilia-inspired early childhood program, students’ ideas and questions shape their dynamic explorations, providing the foundation for their learning throughout the Primary School. Teachers confer with, support, and challenge students, not only to help them reach academic goals but also to stretch them as learners. Students develop their voices and explore their interests and passions through the choices they make in their home classrooms and their encore subject classrooms.
Primary School classroom teachers are elementary education specialists who understand and celebrate the academic and social/emotional growth of young learners. Research shows that students who attend schools with strong social and emotional learning programshave higher academic achievement, better mental health, and fewer behavioral difficulties in school—benefits that continue into adulthood. At the Primary School, teachers help to set the stage for social and emotional learning by helping students develop five social and emotional competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
The daily schedule of the Primary School comprises a broad range of enriching, developmentally appropriate experiences and intentionally reflects students’ developmental needs and attention spans. Students spend most of their day in their grade-level classroom, where the day begins with a Morning Meeting, rooted in the Responsive Classroom approach. Routines and teaching points included in Morning Meeting help to establish a strong classroom community built on mutual respect and care.
Students travel from their home classrooms to encore classes (in science, world language, physical education, library, dance, music, and visual arts), which provide a change of pace and opportunities to move. Daily snacks, lunches, and recesses are scheduled at intervals to provide students with time to socialize and choose their activities.
Student-centered classrooms buzz with energy as small groups and pairs of students work together to share, collaborate, create, and solve problems. Each room invites students into a print-rich learning environment where student work is prominently displayed. Student workspaces are organized in groups, and a gathering area “on the rug” provides a defined community space.
Students use a variety of resources to support and expand their learning. They research and better explain their thinking with the aid of iPads and laptops, experiment and consolidate concepts with manipulatives, easily browse and access a wide variety of reading choices thanks to the classroom library, create imaginary communities with stones on the playground, and even enhance their thinking and their friendships through conversations with peers.
At MKA’s Primary School, every day begins with curiosity—an idea, a question, a spark. We believe children are natural creators and meaning-makers, and our role is to nurture that creative edge from the very start. Through joyful exploration, deep connection, and purposeful learning, our students develop the confidence to wonder boldly and the courage to express who they are.Katie BanksHead of Primary School
Facility Feature
The Nature Outdoor Classroom
In the Outdoor Classroom, students imagine, construct, create, uncover, and share. Applying research on the importance of play to students’ learning, all students have two recesses a day with varied activities are limitless choices in how they move and explore, as part of a team, a group, or individually.
