Welcome! Excelsior is a classical, Christian homeschool program. We are a Community that fosters friendships and spiritual growth and Accountability for academic excellence.
We offer instruction in core subjects using the award winning Memoria Press Curriculum through a one day per week co-op experience. Our goal is to compliment and enhance the homeschool experience for our families by offering a challenging, traditional, academic setting that enlivens the mind and refines the soul. We aim to pass on the heritage of the Christian West to the modern student.
We are Christian, classical, and traditional. In all we do, we seek to engender a love for all that is Good, True, and Beautiful.
Our Mission
Directed by parents and guided by the Gospel, we, as a community, equip and support each other so that we are able to educate our children in the saving knowledge, wisdom, and the love of Our Lord, so that they may become lifelong disciples of Christ for the glory of God and His Kingdom.
Our Purpose
Excelsior is classified as a Christian homeschool academy. What that means is one day a week, we, as mothers, serve in the areas that God has gifted us, in an orderly, classroom context. Together, following the Memoria Press Curriculum, we cooperatively teach what is of good form and lasting value (Classical), and that which conforms to a Biblical standard within a Biblical worldview (Christian). Our goal is to create a beautiful education full of virtue and wisdom for our children, all the while bringing glory and honor to Christ.
Our academy creates wonderful, lifelong friendships within the supportive community of the families. As parents, we share our talents and giftings in educating our children together, holding each other accountable, in love, to do what we have purposed and set out to do. We do hire teachers as needed, but the vast majority of our teachers are our mothers who opt to stay during the day and serve. You’ll find our teachers to be truly of the the highest caliber – caring, thoughtful, creative individuals and excellent at what they teach!
We meet together on Mondays and the remainder of the week we homeschool our children on our own completing the rest of the assignments from the curriculum for that week.
The Passion of Excelsior
Docere, Delectare, Movere
To Teach, To Delight, To Move
- We educate classically in the tradition of our founding fathers and those who have gone before us. Classical education aims to teach wisdom—how to think—and virtue—what to do—through the learning of classical languages, reading of God-honoring classical texts, and study of the 7 liberal arts.
- We pride ourselves on a solid Christian education which anchors itself to the essentials of the Christian faith, maintaining belief in the goodness of Christian morality and the divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.
- We are traditional. Our education practices span the centuries in the sense that parents, in the role of teachers, lead the children to virtue, wisdom, discovery, and inspiration. Lessons focus on content mastery.
The Culture at Excelsior
These are some of the different things we do as a community and the opportunities that we offer that set us apart
We Value Camaraderie and Good Sportsmanship.
Our students participate in a House System. We have 4 different houses. There are two for girls (Pegasus and Leo) and two for boys (Aries and Aquila). The children greatly enjoy the camaraderie that comes from being in a house as well as the friendly competition from competing against the other houses. The students will proudly tell you to which house they belong. They individually earn points each week that contribute to their house’s points. At the end of the year, we tally the points and the winning house gets their name engraved on the house cup. The children cheer each other on and learn good sportsmanship and congratulate others in their achievements.
We Wear Uniforms
You may be surprised that the parents and the students really love them. The children look great in them but it also adds a sense of formalness to what we are doing. What we are doing is important. And when we get dressed up in our uniforms it tells our brain this very thing. It’s the same reason we dress nice to go to a formal occasion, why we would dress nice to go to church, or to meet dignitaries and important people in government. If something is important, we dress the part. And for that reason, we have chosen some really stylish, and affordable uniforms, that set that tone of importance and also give us unity. We are unified in our efforts and unified in our dress. The colors of our uniform are the colors of our cottage school as well as our state colors. It gives the children a sense of pride as well as patriotism. We are proud to wear our state colors and live in Arizona, we are proud to be Americans, and we are proud to attend and participate in Excelsior Classical Homeschool Academy.
We Value the Outdoors
Getting out in nature is important to our community. Our children have excellent study habits and learn so many wonderful things in their schoolwork, but we also want to create a whole, balanced child and intentionally spend time in God’s creation. So, we make exercise, fresh air, and sunshine a regular part of our lives. Our Cardinals Nature Club meets every other Friday to do fun outings such as: go on hikes and observe nature, visit farms, go birding at the preserves, attend evening astronomy telescope outings, and more. Thus, we get to see firsthand all that we are learning in our classes. On the alternate Fridays we have a PE class led by the dads. The children learn how to play all the most common sports, but most importantly, they learn good sportsmanship as we are very strict about staying positive and keeping sports friendly and fun.
We Value Daily Play and Outside Time as a Boost for Learning
We find an outside break actually improves the behavior of the little children for the in-class times. It creates a more focused child when they’ve had a bit of sunshine and a chance to run out their energy. The primary children get a midday break to play outside. The grammar and upper school children will often do classes outside when it makes sense and the weather permits. The children think it’s a real treat if the teacher says a particular subject is outside for that day. For example, at various times of the day, different classes may come outside to say recitations or read the Book of Insects and search for bugs. The children who study the Book of the Birds will frequently see huge hawks sitting on top of the church steeple or nests with dove eggs in them hidden in bushes. Our campus is picturesque and surrounded by beautiful mountains and desert. We have found learning about Greek history while sitting in the grass underneath a massive olive tree, surrounded by blue skies and mountains, can be particularly inspiring.
We Value the Arts
All ages learn songs to sing for the Christmas Cantata and end of the year closing ceremonies. The Grammar and Upper school children will learn Latin hymns from Lingua Angelica and the Primary students will learn the children’s Bible songs and folk songs to perform. First and second grades will learn the basics of rhythm, beat, tone, scale, and reading music in their music class. Once a month an art class is held at the director’s house teaching different mediums. The children will create works of art that are saved and then at the end of the year we have an art show where the children can showcase their art. Our Cardinals Culture Club meets once a month to attend local ballets, symphonies, museums, and more.
We Provide Opportunities for Gaining Familiarity and Comfortability with Public Speaking
The primary children have show and tell in their classes, which is the beginning of public speaking. The children who have memorized poems or famous speeches in their studies will have opportunities to recite them during morning assembly and earn points for their house. They also can recite their poems or Bible verses at the Christmas Cantata and End of the Year Celebration in front of parents and grand-parents. These opportunities are so simple but so incredibly valuable because, within our close-knit and friendly community, the students will learn from their earliest memories that public speaking is an enjoyable, rewarding experience and not something to be feared.
We Value Age Integration
The result is that the older children practice leadership while looking out for the younger children, and thus they act much more mature, and the younger children look up to the older ones and consequently develop maturity. Homeschoolers have never been taught that it’s not “cool” to hang out with a child of a different age, as often is the stigma in public schools. At recess the children will all play together – like a family. Sometimes it’s a giant game of freeze tag or other times they will all draw together. During the school day we will do morning assembly and etiquette lessons all together. The primary school children will do Bible time, midday play break, music, crafts, science experiments, and often read stories together. Each child is learning at his or her own level, taking away from the session what is appropriate for each of them. The grammar and upper school do Latin recitations together, some parts they do in unison, and some separate, each in turn (the younger children learn so much just by listening to the older ones). We also do Lingua Angelica (Latin hymns) together and then we split for individual Latin classes. Age integration doesn’t work for all aspects or subjects of cottage school, of course, but for those that it does, it is a beautiful thing.
We Value Our Freedoms
We are legally classified as homeschoolers according to ARS §15-802 G 2. Education is conducted “primarily by the parents”. Because of this we do not accept any government funds or tax dollars. Arizona has an incredibly strong homeschooling network and several of our families have received aid as needed through the various homeschool scholarships and grants that are available through the national and local Arizona chapters of HSLDA (Homeschool Legal Defense Association). The upside to not taking any government dollars is that we as a community are able to decide what is best for our community without government restrictions and regulations.
How does the rest of the week work when we’re not at cottage school?
The remainder of the week’s homework is scheduled in the parent curriculum manual, you don’t have to do any lesson planning, just assign to your child what it says to do each day. Each day’s workload is moderate and is for the purpose of practicing or preparing for the next Monday lesson. We do not grade homework at our cottage school. We leave that up to the parents to decide what work their children need to do, some children will obtain mastery quicker than others and not all of the work is necessary, other children will require all the work as more practice is needed. Many of our families will combine their Thursdays and Fridays together to have a 3 day weekend every week. This is the beauty of being a homeschooler, you can curtail the curriculum to fit the needs of your child and unique schedule of your family.
What is Classical Education?
Classical education is the imparting of wisdom and virtue through the study of the liberal arts and humanities. The liberal arts are the fundamental intellectual skills used in every academic discipline and the humanities are the history and literature of Western civilization through which we learn, through precept and example, the ideas and values of our culture.
Although it is the best way to learn the skills for both employment and citizenship, it does not focus on narrow job skills training or political indoctrination. Rather, its focus is passing on the culture of the Christian West to the next generation.
Children who are educated classically develop a life long love of learning that enables them to do any job or start any business. They learn the critical thinking skills to conquer any task and figure out what they need to do to accomplish a goal. And they have a strong moral background steeped in what is good, true, and beautiful. This is the way the greatest men and women of our country have been educated for centuries. Only in the last 50 years have people tried to derail the system that produced some of the greatest minds. But time has proven that the classical way is the best way.
Our Curriculum
The curriculum at the center of the Excelsior program is Memoria Press’ Classical Core Curriculum. The curriculum focuses on the cultivation of wisdom and virtue through meditation on the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. This is accomplished in two ways: first, through training in the liberal arts; and secondly, through a familiarity with the great books and the great thinkers of the Western tradition. This curriculum is constructed with two central ideas in mind: mastery and simplicity.
Mastery of content is the goal of every program within the Classical Core Curriculum. Students are guided through the material in a way that emphasizes mastering a concept before moving on to a new one. The ability to immediately recall information and explain ideas is the end-goal of each program within the Classical Core Curriculum.
Simplicity is central to the design of each program. Rather than building the curricula full of extras and dress-ups, Memoria Press provides a robust, thorough, and focused exploration of each subject as it is studied. The purpose is to present a product that is highly accessible and effectively taught.
To learn more about the products and support Memoria Press offers homeschooling families, visit their website.
The Classical Distinction
A classical Christian education aspires to give students the kind of wisdom that would require a lifetime of experience to achieve on their own. This wisdom is gained by reading the classics under the guidance of teachers who have integrity, knowledge, and wisdom.
The curriculum is a coherent whole in which each year of study builds upon the skills and knowledge of the previous year. Families should not be deterred, however, by the cumulative nature of our curriculum. With assistance from the mothers who teach, and some possibly some summer preparation, motivated students can enter our program of studies at any grade level and be successful.
Our formal classical curriculum begins in 3rd grade, so students who enter our program any year after 3rd grade are encouraged to select books from our curriculum list for summer reading. For Latin, however, no extra preparation is necessary. An age-appropriate beginner class, called Latina Christiana, is available for all new students.
The typical high school courses, such as American Literature or World History, are missing from our curriculum; instead there are the three “Studies” areas—Classical/Christian Studies, English Studies, and American/Modern Studies. In these integrated courses, students learn the history, geography, literature, and art of each culture. We believe this is an effective method of learning about the past, one which decreases fragmentation and increases understanding and retention. Courses in our three-pronged “Studies” curriculum satisfy college requirements for history, English, and geography.
Philosophy
Latin and Greek, mathematics, and music are foundational and universal languages. They are the cumulative and challenging subjects in the Memoria Press curriculum, enabling students to reach their full intellectual potential by developing the powers of the mind as no other subjects can. The singing of hymns (which we call sacred music) awakens the soul to God and assists in creating a community of faith, hope, and love. A careful reading of the classics, guided by the truths of Scripture, develops wisdom and virtue.
Our curriculum is organized into the following six academic subjects plus music, art, and physical education:
• Classical Languages • Mathematics • Classical/Christian Studies
• English Studies • Science • American/Modern Studies