Sixth through Eighth Grades

Holistic education for the Head, Hands, and Heart.

Middle School children are inspired deeply by their feelings and by the beauty of the world around them. They respond powerfully to the tools and methods used at Pine Forest School, which engages their feelings through music, art, movement, and drama, and enlivens learning through in-depth study of a topic using an experiential, hands-on approach.

Pine Forest School offers a dynamic curriculum for the middle school years — grades 6 through 8. Students begin the day at 8:00 a.m. with the classroom teacher and then move quickly to active classes such as band, orchestra, movement, art, or Spanish. This is followed by main lesson, the heart of the instructional day,  which is filled with in-depth learning in the areas of math, literature, language arts, history, science, and geography.

Each two-hour main lesson topic continues for 3 to 4 weeks. Every lesson integrates a balance of thinking, feeling, and willing activities so that students are actively engaged in learning. Music, poetry/speech, drama, and art are integrated into the main lesson where possible to enrich the learning experience. The children create their own “textbooks”, or Main Lesson books, which are beautiful, artistic, academic representations of what they have learned.