Napa Christian

Standing Firm in the Armor of God

Elementary - CONQUESTS

Welcome to CONQUESTS, an exciting new educational paradigm!

What is CONQUESTS?


Create  - Activating the right side of the brain
Outreach - Learning to serve
Nurture - Teaching sustainability and stewardship
Query - Differentiated Instruction across the curriculum
Understand - Relationships – Teamwork - Community
Experience - The power of directed play
Solve - STREAM across the grades
Thrive - Taking care of mind, body, and spirit
Soar  -  Going beyond what is expected

Read on to learn more about each item:

Create - activating the right side of the brain

  • Music: Develop and express musicianship skills through instrumental and vocal play.
  • Art: Develop and express Art skills through hands-on projects modeled after the grand masters’ modus operandi.
  • Performance Arts: Create characters, improvise and project professionalism on stage using proven performance techniques that will boost confidence.
  • Craft projects designed to create beautiful, and usable projects through sewing, knitting, crochet, and needlework, etc.
  • Creating with the use of technology: Clay-mation, animation, movie making, editing, sound, lighting, photography, and the use of software.

Outreach – learning to serve

  • Participate in community service projects, including developing companionship with the elderly and infirm.
  • Peer mentorship from students at a higher grade level or experience to encourage and strengthen each other.
  • Developing effective spiritual leadership in missions and evangelism with a focus on salvation and service.
  • Synergize the home and the school creating congruency and consistency by hosting quarterly parent seminars.

Nurture - teaching sustainability and stewardship

  • Foster the reverence for nature and humanity inherent in the young child.
  • Students will take daily care of the campus animals.
  • Each grade will be responsible for caring for the school garden, orchard, or farm daily.
  • Students will be responsible for cleaning and caring for their classrooms.
  • Green week. A school-wide cross curricular learning experience on conservation.
  • Annual fundraiser to support conservation.

Query – Differentiated Instruction across the curriculum

  • Embracing the developmental model of the growing child and awaken each child’s full and unique potential.
  • Taking learning beyond the textbook so students understand how what they are learning applies to the world around them.
  • A variety of assessment techniques utilized according to students’ unique learning needs.
  • With teachers as facilitators, students take pride in work that is their own, learning in new and individual ways.
  • Every subject taught is within the context of a broader vision. How does everything learned connect to the world we live in?
  • Students are not required to stay within a grade for individual core subjects. Children who excel in one area, may move ahead. Students needing more time, have the opportunity to reinforce the concepts.

Understand – instilling a sense of community

  • Meeting occurs as a community in the chapel at the start of each day. Welcome, pray, and pledge.
  • Teachers meet individually with each student for a couple of minutes each day to “check-in”.
  • Intentional and focused Bible studies, including personal and group prayer time.
  • Family members donate 2 hours/week on campus, enhancing relationships between home and school.
  • Pathfinder/Adventurer classes, part of the curriculum, focus on working towards honors and take part in church organized activities.
  • Buddy systems between students in different grades. Cross-age pals meet monthly building solid relationships with both younger and older students.
  • Classes connect with sister classrooms across the world and engage via skype and email.

Experience – the power of directed play

  • Activities such as water play, woodwork, building, treehouse time, sand play, and outdoor art are available to students every day.
  • Play activities are designed to optimize learning, collaboration, and enjoyment.
  • Games of strategy are encouraged such as chess, checkers, mancala, and hopscotch.

Solve – using education to make real changes

  • Napa Christian is a STREAM school, developing thinking, reasoning, teamwork, investigative, and creative skills in Science, Technology, Robotics, Engineering, Arts, and Math.
  • Students are taught authentic STREAM practices.
  • The campus is designed to allow exploratory thinking and experimentation to take place easily, with limited controls.
  • Students are encouraged to solve problems which can then be applied to the community as a whole, and to all areas of their own lives.

Thrive – making health a lifetime priority

  • Sustaining a close relationship with God is woven into every strand of the hidden and tangible curriculum.
  • PE lessons include a variety of sports and climbing activities to optimize strength and fitness.
  • Healthy food practices including balanced lunch boxes and snacks, take part in weekly cooking classes.
  • Experiential play will include digging, climbing, and outdoor activities such as archery and mud play.
  • Life-skills are an integral part of the weekly schedule:
  • Cider pressing, cooking outdoors, apple pressing and drying, leaf raking, birdhouse building, pruning and mulching roses, broom-making, bees, compost bins, tool identification and maintenance, canning fruit, pickling vegetables, basket -weaving, wilderness survival, first-aid, etc.
  • Learning how to rest and disconnect from technology and other daily stresses.

Soar – going beyond what’s expected

  • STREAM develops a set of thinking, reasoning, teamwork, investigative, and creative skills that students can use in all areas of their lives.
  • Addressing real social, economic, and environmental problems to seek solutions using flexible processes that take students from identifying a problem to creating and developing a solution using engineering design processes.
  • The path to learning is open ended, within constraints. Work is hands-on and collaborative, and decisions about solutions are student-generated. Students communicate to share ideas and redesign their prototypes as needed.
  • Science and math are not isolated subjects, but work together to solve problems, adding relevance to concepts.
  • Our campus has a project room available which can be used to manifest concept mastery.