Kindergarten & 1st Grade

Our Explorers

Learning about themselves and their world

Through a balance of purposeful play and direct and project-based instruction, your child will spend time learning about themselves and their natural environment. This balance is weighed toward curiosity and exploration in kindergarten, shifting to more structured investigation and learning in first grade. Play in both grades is largely inspired by open-ended and ungendered “loose parts” in the outdoors and in our classrooms.

The curricular focus is on asking questions, exploring answers, and thinking about oneself as a learner - all while practicing “student behaviors.” Foundational aspects of literacy and math, like phonemic awareness, letter recognition and formation, and number sense and comparisons are playfully explored in kindergarten. Our first-grade program builds upon these foundations, while maintaining the experiential and engaging components that make learning meaningful and fun. This approach allows your child to explore elements of social studies, science, literacy, mathematics, and the arts in integrated, real-world contexts.

Your student may enter kindergarten a ready reader, or not having written their name - a quick-thinking mathematician, or learning math concepts for the first time. Our program joyfully supports and challenges all levels.

“I think what I love about KapKa is the curriculum can flex with what the kids are passionate about. In kindergarten, the kids were really, really passionate about spiders. And so the kindergarten teacher made several months of curriculum around math and literacy, all about spiders. And this helps the kids build this natural love of learning.”

— Chris, parent of a 1st grader and a Kindergartener