A classical community of friends humbly receiving truth, goodness, and beauty from the Great Tradition.

Classical

The pedagogy and ideals that existed in Greco-Roman education have been being developed and more fully realized by the Christian church in a Christ-centered curriculum for over 2,000 years. As Dr. Christopher Perrin says, this is the kind of education that begins in wonder and leads to worship, to wisdom, and to fruitful work.

Community of Friends

Education involves teaching students how to have rightly ordered loves, and that begins with properly loving God and neighbor. We believe true education cannot happen apart from sincere relationships between families that are seeking the Good Life together. This is much more than a weekly class; this is a community of friends.

Humbly Receiving

We did not invent these ideas. Our desired posture is one of humility and reverence for traditional wisdom that is full of more depth and richness than we could ever contain in ourselves. Our pedagogy takes particular interest in how to nurture humility in our students through the cultivation of a receptive attitude by students and teachers alike.

Truth, Goodness, and Beauty

Reality exists as Truth spoken into existence by God. Goodness is perceived by the senses, whereby we long for true and beautiful things. God has ordained Beauty (synonymous in the classical tradition with Harmony) to move the human heart towards Himself. These three are referred to as the transcendentals, and they are first and foremost meant to be experienced rather than defined or examined.

The Great Tradition

The Western Tradition of education is rooted in the experience of the transcendentals and the reading of books that have stood the test of time. Greatly influenced by the work of John Senior, we believe in nurturing elementary students in Good Books as preparation for an encounter with the Great Books in the upper years.

About Us

In The Restoration of Christian Culture John Senior wrote, “If we all went home, any village in America today could be… beautiful, good, strong and free.” We believe in the transformative power of love, particularly the love of family and friends pursuing a vision of a Christ-centered culture together. We desire to strive together to love God, love our neighbors, and love our local land well. As Senior later continued, one of the most powerful influences in the world is, “ordinary men and women driven to heroic virtue by the love of God.” We are most certainly ordinary men and women, and we have hearts full of prayer that we would live lives of virtue worth imitating as we seek to disciple and raise our children to be the next generation of courageous, faithful men and women.

Transmitting Culture
Fundamental to our vision of education is that it is the transmission of a culture, and Kalos Classical is aimed at helping parents more faithfully transmit a humanizing, liberating culture of wisdom, eloquence, and virtue that will prepare their children for the future God calls them to. While we believe parents are the primary ones responsible for the discipleship of their children, we recognize that a community of like-minded families can exponentially bless the next generation by pooling wisdom and resources to give our children much more than any one of us could do alone.

Music and Gymnastic
In the classical tradition, elementary education was characterized by gymnastics and music. Gymnastics referred to, “a vigorous training of the body… the purpose of which was not simply recreation and health but the acuity of sensing,” (John Senior, Restoration of Christian Culture). At Kalos Classical we follow the latin dictum nihil in intellectu nisi prius in sensu, which translated means, “Nothing in the intellect unless first in the senses.” By grounding education in the senses, we prioritize the use of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch as fundamental and necessary prerequisites to all other knowledge.

By musical we do not mean merely the study of music or the use of musical instruments. A musical education historically centered on wonder as the beginning of all philosophy. The nine Muses in Greek mythology were, “the deities of poetry, music, dance, history, and astronomy. They introduce the young to reality through delight. It is a total education including the heart the memory and passions and imagination as well as the body and intelligence,” (Dennis Quinn, “Education by the Muses”). By grounding education in wonder, we prioritize the imagination, memory, and stories as essential to how we approach all areas of learning.

The Curriculum
Built upon our fundamental beliefs about God and how he has made the world, we believe that a proper curriculum worthy of elementary students made in the image of God is a full, embodied education in prayer; in singing hymns, psalms, and folk songs; in the recitation of Scripture and poetry; in the reading of Scripture, poetry, fables, moral tales, fairy tales, myths, legends, history, literature, and biographies; in the experience of latin, handicrafts, artist study, composer study, nature study, and naked-eye stargazing; and in the practice of calligraphy, manners, and dancing. For this year we will cover from this list what is doable in one day a week; you can view a sample agenda below. Families in Kalos Classical will also have access to a full elementary curriculum called The Children’s Tradition, that will integrate with what is happening at our weekly co-op. The use of that curriculum during the rest of the week is not mandatory, but families using TCT are given preference in admissions.

The Plan
Based on the classical Ages of Man, our students are divided into the Nursery (1st and 2nd grade), Lower School Years (3rd and 4th grade), Upper School Years (5th through 7th), and Adolescence (8th through 10th). The Nursery and School Years students have a class day once a week, on Tuesdays, and the Adolescent students have class two days a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Mondays, 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm ~ Nature Study Lessons
Tuesdays, 10 am - 2:30 pm ~ Nursery and School Years (1st - 7th grade)
Wednesdays & Fridays 10 am - 2:30 pm ~ Adolescence (8th - 10th grade)
Thursdays, 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm ~ Alternating Homestead Class and Woodworking Workshop

Cost
Registration: one time fee of $50 (non-refundable after July 31st). This will cover special-order Kalos Classical TBG (Truth, Goodness, and Beauty) Notebooks that include copywork, dictation, artist prints, and more.

The cost for Tuesday’s Nursery and School Years program is $300 per term, or $900 for the year.

The cost of the Wednesday/Friday Adolescent program is $800 per term, or $2,400 for the year.

Lower School Years (3rd/4th) Agenda
Tuesdays

10:00 - 10:20 | Benediction Table: The Lord’s Prayer, General Catechism, Scripture Memory, Psalm Singing, Folk Song
10:20- 10:25 | Poetry Reading
10:25 - 10:30 | Poetry Repetition
10:30 - 10:40 | Fables of Aesop translated by Roger L’estrange
10:40 - 11:10 | Incline My Heart: Copywork and Dictation from the Psalms
11:10 - 11:40 | Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb (with Mr. Faus)
11:40 - 12:10 | Integrated Nature Study and Geography
12:10 - 12:40 | Lunch Recess
12:40 - 1:10 | Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne
1:10 - 1:40 | Latin Through Stories
1:40 - 2:05 | Artist/Composer Study Loop
2:05 - 2:30 | Drawing

Upper School Years (5th -7th) Agenda
Tuesdays

10:00 - 10:20 | Benediction Table: The Lord’s Prayer, General Catechism, Scripture Memory, Psalm Singing, Folk Song
10:20 - 10:25 | Dismissal
10:25 - 10:45 | Poetry & Illustration Opener
10:45 - 10:50 | Poetry Repetition
10:50 - 11:10 | Aesop’s Fables / Gesta Romanorum Loop
11:10 - 11:40 | Written Narrations (with Mrs. Faus)
11:40 - 12:10 | Literature: The Harvester by Gene Stratton-Porter
12:10 - 12:40 | Lunch Recess
12:40 - 1:10 | Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb / D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths Loop
1:10 - 1:40 | Artist Study / Composer Study Loop
1:40 - 2:30 | Latin Through Stories
2:30 Closing Prayer

Adolescent (8th - 10th) Agenda
Wednesdays and Fridays

10:00 - 10:20 | Benediction Table (General Catechism, Scripture Memory, Psalm, and Folk Song)
10:20 -10:40 | Poetry Reading
10:40 - 12:00 | Integrated History & Geography (Ancients to the Birth of Christ)
12:00 - 12:30 | Lunch Recess
12:30 - 12:40 | Poetry Recitation
12:40 - 1:30 | Written Compositions with the Progymnasmata Exercises (Wednesdays) / Nature Study (Fridays)
1:40 pm - Literature

Key History Texts
The Enuma Elish
The Code of Hammurabi
Story of Sinuhe
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Holy Bible (King James Version)
Aesop, Fables
Ovid, Metamorphoses
Homer, The Iliad
Homer, The Odyssey
Virgil, The Aeneid
Seven Books Against the Pagans by Orosius (History Spine)

Key Literature Texts
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s School Days
C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers