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Calvary Christian Academy
Mission & Vision
Faculty & Staff
Curriculum
Choosing A Christian School
Tuition & Fees
Admissions Process
Resources
Contact
Apply now
Calvary Christian Academy
Mission & Vision
Faculty & Staff
Curriculum
Choosing A Christian School
Tuition & Fees
Admissions Process
Resources
Contact
Apply now
Folder: About
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Mission & Vision
Faculty & Staff
Curriculum
Choosing A Christian School
Folder: Admission
Back
Tuition & Fees
Admissions Process
Resources
Contact
Apply now

At Calvary Christian Academy we teach Kindergarten through 6th grade using a classical, Christ centered curriculum. Every subject on this page sits under one conviction. God made an ordered world, His Word is true, and children learn best when what they study reflects that order.

Below you will find what your child will actually study. We have tried to be specific rather than vague, because families comparing schools deserve real information.

Built Around How Children Actually Learn

Classical education divides a child's schooling into stages that follow how children naturally grow. Kindergarten through 6th grade sits in what is called the grammar stage, and it is the stage where children are best at absorbing and remembering.

Watch a seven year old and you will see it. They memorize things effortlessly. They repeat songs until you know them too. They ask endless questions about why. They want to hold things, taste things, take things apart. They love a good story and they will ask for it again.

Rather than working against that, we build on it. Our classrooms use songs, chants, recitation, movement, and repetition to fill these years with things worth remembering. Scripture. Latin roots. Math facts. Maps. Poetry. The story of the world. These become the furniture of a child's mind, and they stay.

“Classical does not mean silent rows of desks. It means matching the method to the child in front of you.”

Morning Recitation

Every school day at CCA begins the same way. Before the first lesson, the class recites together. Scripture passages, Latin vocabulary, poems, math facts, the books of the Bible, and whatever else the class is committing to memory that season.

It takes a few minutes and it does more work than almost anything else in the day. Children learn how to memorize, which is a skill in itself. They start the morning with God's Word in their mouths. And they do it together, which turns memory work into something a class shares rather than something a child endures alone.

How Our Classrooms Are Organized

CCA has four classrooms. Kindergarten stands on its own. Above that, students learn in paired grades: 1st and 2nd together, 3rd and 4th together, 5th and 6th together.

If you are picturing a one room schoolhouse where a teacher divides herself in half, that is not what this is. Multi age classrooms are a deliberate part of the classical tradition, and they solve problems that single grade classrooms create.

What Stays at Grade Level

Not everything rotates, and the subjects that build skill in a fixed order do not.

Math is straight grade level work. A 3rd grader does 3rd grade math and a 4th grader does 4th grade math, in the same room, at the same time.

Reading and language arts are taught at each student's actual level. Students work in reading groups, and we place children in the group that fits them rather than the group that matches their age. A strong 3rd grade reader can work ahead. A 4th grader who needs another year on a skill gets it without being marked out for it.

Latin is grouped by ability for the same reason. The sequence matters more than the birthday.

Why This Is Good for Your Child

Multi age classrooms have advantages that single grade rooms cannot offer. Younger students hear the older students' lessons and reach upward. Older students consolidate what they know by helping the younger ones, which is one of the most reliable ways to turn knowledge into mastery. Teachers keep the same students for two years, so no September is spent getting to know a child from scratch. And in a small school, a child is never the only one of anything.

What Your Child Will Study

Our curriculum for the 2026/2027 school year. Select a classroom to see what that room is studying.

  • Bible: The Child's Story Bible, Old Testament

    History: Heroes for Young Readers, missionary biographies

    Language Arts: Memoria Press Phonics Readers, Spell to Write and Read, Cursive First penmanship

    Literature: Beatrix Potter, Winnie the Pooh, Paddington Bear, and other classics

    Math: Horizons K

    Science: The World Around Me

    Geography: Geography Songs, Sing Around the World

    Music: Chapel hymns and the Christmas concert

    Physical Education: Yes

    Whole school: Celebration of Learning and the school play

  • On the two year cycle. In 2026/2027 this room studies the 2nd grade year.

    THIS YEAR

    Bible: Veritas Press, Genesis through Joshua

    History: Veritas Press, Old Testament and Ancient Egypt

    Science: Dinosaur Days, Rock Around the Earth

    NEXT YEAR

    Bible: The Child's Story Bible, New Testament

    History: Beautiful Feet, Early American History

    Science: Hoot and Chirp, Buzz and Bite

    EVERY YEAR, AT GRADE LEVEL

    Math: Horizons 1 or Horizons 2

    Language Arts: Memoria Press Phonics Readers and Shurley Grammar as appropriate, Spell to Write and Read, Cursive First penmanship

    Literature: Classic literature, read in groups matched to reading level

    Latin: Song School Latin, placed by ability

    Geography: Maps, Charts and Graphs, plus Geography Songs

    Music: Chapel hymns and the Christmas concert

    Physical Education: Yes

    Whole school: Celebration of Learning and the school play

  • On the two year cycle. In 2026/2027 this room studies the 4th grade year.

    THIS YEAR

    Bible: Veritas Press, Chronicles through Malachi

    History: Veritas Press, Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation

    Science: Heat and Energy, Electricity and Magnetism, Sound and Light

    NEXT YEAR

    Bible: Veritas Press, Judges through Kings

    History: Veritas Press, New Testament, Greece and Rome

    Science: Habitats, Hollows and Homes

    EVERY YEAR, AT GRADE LEVEL

    Math: Horizons 3 or Horizons 4

    Language Arts: Shurley Grammar, Spell to Write and Read, Cursive First in 3rd, Institute for Excellence in Writing and Classical Roots beginning in 4th

    Literature: Classic literature, read in groups matched to reading level

    Latin: Latin for Children, placed by ability

    Geography: Maps, Charts and Graphs, plus Geography Songs

    Music: Chapel hymns and the Christmas concert

    Physical Education: Yes

    Whole school: Celebration of Learning and the school play

  • On the two year cycle. In 2026/2027 this room studies the 6th grade year.

    THIS YEAR

    Bible: Veritas Press, Acts through Revelation

    History: Veritas Press, 1815 to the Present

    Science: Earth Science, Answers in Genesis

    NEXT YEAR

    Bible: Veritas Press, The Gospels

    History: Veritas Press, Explorers to 1815

    Science: Life Science

    EVERY YEAR, AT GRADE LEVEL

    Math: Horizons 5 or Horizons 6

    Language Arts: Shurley Grammar, Spell to Write and Read, Institute for Excellence in Writing, Classical Roots vocabulary

    Literature: Classic literature, read in groups matched to reading level

    Latin: Latin for Children, placed by ability

    Geography: Maps, Charts and Graphs, plus Geography Songs

    Music: Chapel hymns and the Christmas concert

    Physical Education: Yes

    Whole school: Celebration of Learning and the school play

A Closer Look at Each Subject

  • Every classroom studies Scripture as its own subject, not as a devotional tacked onto the morning. Kindergarten works through The Child's Story Bible in narrative form. From there students use Veritas Press and move through the Bible book by book, and across their years at CCA they cover it from Genesis to Revelation.

    Reading Scripture this way matters more than it might sound. Children come to see the Bible as one continuous account rather than a collection of disconnected stories, and they meet it as history, because it is.

  • Kindergarten begins with missionary biographies, learning about men and women who carried the gospel at real cost. The 1st and 2nd grade room studies early American history through Beautiful Feet in one year of its cycle, reading living books rather than a textbook, and ancient Egypt and the Old Testament world in the other.

    From there students work through Western civilization using Veritas Press: Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages through the Reformation, the age of exploration to 1815, and 1815 to the present. Because history and Bible run on the same rotation, a class studying ancient Egypt is reading the Old Testament alongside it. The two subjects illuminate each other all year.

  • Reading begins with phonics. Kindergarten and 1st grade use Memoria Press Phonics Readers, and all our grades use Spell to Write and Read, a phonics based program that teaches spelling and writing together rather than treating them as separate problems.

    Handwriting starts in cursive. Cursive First runs from Kindergarten through 3rd grade, which surprises some parents. Cursive is easier for young hands than printing, it is faster, and it builds a habit of care.

    Formal grammar begins in 2nd grade with Shurley Grammar, which teaches sentence structure through jingles and hand motions and, yes, a fair amount of noise. In 4th grade students add the Institute for Excellence in Writing and Classical Roots vocabulary, moving from understanding how sentences work to composing paragraphs and essays with real structure.

    All of this happens at each student's level. Reading groups are formed by ability and adjusted as children grow.

  • Latin begins in 1st grade and continues every year through 6th, grouped by ability rather than by age. Song School Latin introduces vocabulary through songs and games. Students who are ready move into Latin for Children and work through Primer A and Primer B.

    Parents reasonably ask why. Latin is the root of a large share of English vocabulary, so a student who knows Latin roots can often work out a word they have never seen. It is also the most orderly language a child can learn, which makes it excellent training for grammar, logic, and any language they take up later. And a good deal of the Western world's writing was done in it.

  • We use Horizons Math from Kindergarten through 6th grade, and math is always taught at true grade level. In a combination classroom, a 3rd grader does 3rd grade math while a 4th grader does 4th grade math.

    Horizons uses a spiral approach, meaning concepts return throughout the year rather than being covered once and set aside. Students keep practicing what they learned in the fall well into the spring, which is how mastery actually forms.

    By the end of 6th grade students have worked through place value into the hundred trillions, fractions and decimals, ratios and percentages, integers, exponents and square roots, geometry including angles and bisectors, coordinate graphing in four quadrants, mean, mode and median, and practical arithmetic like writing checks, budgeting, and banking.

  • Students read real books. Unabridged, whole, and chosen because they are worth a child's time.

    Kindergarten starts with Beatrix Potter, Winnie the Pooh, and Paddington. By 6th grade students are reading Little Women, A Christmas Carol, The Call of the Wild, and Anne of Green Gables. Along the way come Charlotte's Web, The Secret Garden, Where the Red Fern Grows, Johnny Tremain, and dozens more. A student who is with us from Kindergarten through 6th grade will read roughly seventy five classic works.

    Reading is done in groups matched to each child's level, so a student who is ready for harder books gets them.

  • Science in the grammar years is about observation, wonder, and getting your hands into things. Kindergarten studies the world around them. Our combination classrooms rotate through birds and insects, dinosaurs and geology, habitats and animal homes, the physical sciences of heat, energy, electricity, magnetism, sound and light, then life science and earth science.

    We teach science as the study of what God made, which is not a limitation on inquiry but a reason for it. Careful observation of the natural world is one of the oldest ways of paying attention to the Creator.

  • Every grade sings its way through the world map. Geography Songs covers continents, oceans, countries, states, and regions through thirty four songs, and students trace, label, and color the corresponding maps as they go. From 1st grade forward students also work through Maps, Charts and Graphs, learning to read and interpret geographic information rather than only locate places.

  • Students learn hymns for chapel and prepare together for the Christmas concert, which is one of the fuller expressions of the school as a whole community.

  • All grades have regular physical education.

Things We Do Together

Special vents bring the whole school together each year, Kindergarten through 6th grade.

The Celebration of Learning is where students present what they have memorized and studied to families and to each other. It is not a performance staged for parents so much as a chance for students to show that the year's work took hold.

The school play involves every classroom. Younger students take smaller parts and older students carry more, and the result is a production that belongs to the whole school rather than to one class.

Add to that the Turkey Trot, Christmas concert and weekly chapel, and a family joining CCA can expect several points each year where the entire school gathers.

Come See It

A curriculum list tells you what a school teaches. It does not tell you what the classrooms feel like, how the teachers speak to children, or whether your child would flourish here. For that you need to walk the halls.

We would love to show you around. Tours are informal, they take about an hour, and you are welcome to bring your children.

Schedule a Tour
Apply for 2026/2027

Financial Aid Available As God Provides

If cost is the thing holding you back from exploring CCA, please reach out. We would rather have that conversation than have you assume the answer.

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Our full scope and sequence, including the complete literature list for each grade, is provided to enrolled families. Questions about a specific subject or grade are always welcome. Call the school office at 775-333-6271 or email info@ccareno.org.

220 Edison Way, Reno, NV 89502

775-333-6271

info@ccareno.org

CCA is proud to operate as a ministry of Calvary Chapel Reno Sparks, sharing a commitment to biblical truth and Christian community. Learn more about our shared values at calvaryreno.org/faith