Multi-year Experience
St. Benedict Classical Academy’s early learning program primarily draws inspiration from the Montessori method of education, integrated with the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd religious formation curriculum. Our early learning program is designed to be a multi-year experience for children aged three through four or five.
Our three early learning classrooms are each led by two educators and serve an average of 15 students.
The Montessori Method
Montessori education is a whole child-centered approach that respects the spirit of the child and is time-tested and widely respected as an ideal approach to supporting the development of crucial literacy, numeracy, critical thinking, social-emotional, and executive function skills for life.
The Montessori Method integrates learning across five main areas: Practical Life (teaching motor tasks found in real life), Sensorial (aiding children in identifying, discriminating and classifying forms, colors, sounds, etc.), Mathematics, Language, and Faith Formation. All of our classrooms provide students with a prepared environment that supports students with growing and developing in all of these areas.
Catechesis of the Good Shepherd
Each classroom has a trained catechist of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS) Program who integrates the nationally renowned curriculum into daily life at school. CGS uses Parables such as Christ as the Good Shepherd, to inspire joy and relationship to Christ. Catechists offer presentations to children that follow the liturgical seasons of the church and focus on the key themes of Prayer, Baptism, and the Eucharist.
Our Catholic Identity
Our Catholic identity is woven into everything that we do in our early learning program at SBCA. In addition to integration of our Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program, we live out our faith at school in ways such as:
- Daily prayer to start our morning, Angelus at noontime, grace before eating, prayer to end the day
- Implementation of our “Saint, Composer, Artist and Virtue of the Month” school-wide program
- Regular Mass, including Holy Days of Obligation
- Celebration of Saints’ Feast Days and other holy days (i.e. our All Saints Day celebration)