Preschool
Preschool & VPK
Smith Preparatory Academy’s K3 and K4 programs create a stimulating and supportive environment in which students develop a love for learning and the foundations necessary to become life-long learners. Our children enjoy learning through rhymes, songs, chants, jingles, and movement. Young children delight in imitating and memorizing. Their enthusiasm lends itself to learning the building blocks of language, history, theology, math, and science.
Grammar School
K-6th
The Lower School years are referred to as the “Grammar Stage” of a classical education. During these early years, we strive to create a stimulating and supportive environment in which students develop a love for learning and the foundations necessary to become life-long learners.
Young children delight in imitating and memorizing. This enthusiasm lends itself to learning the grammar, or building blocks, of language, history, theology, math, and science. We appeal to children’s natural curiosity, and we incorporate as many of their senses as possible in the learning process. Children enjoy learning through rhymes, songs, chants, jingles, and movement. Great emphasis is placed on review and creative reinforcement. These are some of the most effective ways children learn historical information, science methods and terminology, grammar rules, math facts, and scripture passages.
Our goal during the Grammar Stage is to lay a strong foundation for life-long learning. This foundation is critical for children as they embark on the path to becoming knowledgeable, clear-thinking, and eloquent adults, who are equipped to worship God and delight in the world He has made.
Dialectic School
7th-8th
In the Upper School program, students move from Grammar to Dialectic and Rhetoric. The Lower School aims to build a solid foundation of knowledge and skills across the academic disciplines. The Upper School strives to instill habits of sound, critical reasoning and cultivate eloquence in communication.
While Grammar stresses the accumulation of information and mastery of fundamentals, the Dialectic emphasizes the passage from information to knowledge, which requires logic and critical thinking. Students study formal logic during their middle school years in order to sharpen their analytic skills. Additionally, in each subject area they begin to learn the distinctive logic of the discipline: to think as historians, scientists, writers, etc.
Rhetoric School
9th-12th
In the Upper School program, students move from Grammar to Dialectic and Rhetoric. The Lower School aims to build a solid foundation of knowledge and skills across the academic disciplines. The Upper School strives to instill habits of sound, critical reasoning and cultivate eloquence in communication.
While Grammar stresses the accumulation of information and mastery of fundamentals, the Dialectic emphasizes the passage from information to knowledge, which requires logic and critical thinking. Students study formal logic during their middle school years in order to sharpen their analytic skills. Additionally, in each subject area they begin to learn the distinctive logic of the discipline: to think as historians, scientists, writers, etc.