The elementary grades are divided into The 1st & 2nd Grade Department and the 3rd, 4th & 5th Grade Department.

These primary grades offer a theme-based hands-on learning experience that emphasizes thinking, questioning, observing, and reasoning. Students learn to understand the printed word and how it works primarily through language-based activities in listening, speaking, reading, and writing complemented by a phonics component which provides specific strategies for dealing with written language.

Mathematics concepts and skills are taught through the use of manipulatives, with an emphasis on both problem solving and acquisition of beginning computational skills. Social studies activities develop an awareness of self, family, community, country, and the world, and the relationships between these units.

An exciting hands-on science program nurtures children's natural curiosity, emphasizes exploration, observation, logic, classification, and deductive reasoning, and helps students understand the world around them. First and second grade students work weekly with specialists in music, art, library, physical education, and computer.

The primary program strives to provide a wide variety of experiences designed to create an atmosphere in which learning is natural and enjoyable.

View the full list of Academic Subjects for First Grade or Second Grade.

The intermediate grades offer a curriculum that emphasizes the process and the development of higher-level thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation, original observation and thinking, experiential learning, and academic responsibility. Writing in all subject areas demands that students wrestle with what they are learning and give it meaning. Students read from a wide selection of fine children's literature while continuing to solidify basic decoding and comprehension skills.

Students continue to learn basic math facts and algorithms and use these skills to solve problems; as students move through the grades instruction increasingly emphasizes logical thinking, estimating, probability, and mental math. Each step of the way, the use of manipulatives provides a strong base of concrete experiences before moving into the abstract and symbolic.

Use of a computer becomes an important part of instruction in these grades, with computer lab activities integrated into the regular classroom curriculum. Science exploration and activities are centered around issues of global concern, and fourth and fifth grade students actively participate in the school's annual science fair, Project: STAR.

Social studies activities incorporate a variety of field trips and hands-on experiences. A special feature of fourth grade is a field trip to view history first-hand at the San Gabriel Mission. Fifth graders culminate a social studies/language arts unit based upon Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana with an overnight adventure on a 19th-century sailing ship.

Students in grades three, four, and five have regular specialists-taught instruction in art, music, computer, library, Spanish, French, and physical education.

View the full list of Academic Subjects for 3rd Grade, 4th Grade, or 5th Grade.