Marin Horizon School

Marin Horizon School offers a challenging academic curriculum that prepares its graduates to succeed in school and in life. Our program offers traditional core disciplinescultural studies, language arts, science, mathematics, and fine artswithin an enriched and interdisciplinary approach. Specialists provide instruction in Spanish, visual and performing arts, music, library, media, science and physical education. Children are encouraged to work at their highest academic potential.

Marin Horizon offers a challenging curriculum where learning is based on the following principles:

Children

• A childs life is a continuum in which each stage of development is preparation for the next. Like a mirror of the developing childs natural states, the curriculum complements our childrens needs and interests as they mature academically, socially, physically and emotionally.
• Children naturally love to learn. MHS teachers are committed to providing an environment and direction that promote learning through discovery at a childs own pace.
• Children are grouped in multi-age classrooms. Older children in the class benefit from helping the younger ones, reinforcing their knowledge by modeling for their peers. The youngest children imitate and internalize skills before they even receive lessons. Knowledge and behavior is passed on from one level to the next.

Curriculum

• Our curriculum is integrated and interdisciplinary, focusing on the inter-connection of everything in the world. Where traditional schools begin with me and move out, we begin with a global view to give children a mental file box of reference points to help them understand the details as they are encounterEducation
• Our curriculum is organized in a spiral so that ideas and concepts that are introduced to young children are revisited and revisited with greater detail and complexity as children mature.
• Our program is solidly grounded in multicultural studies and celebration of diversity in its many manifestations.

Program

• Our program addresses the whole child and we are as concerned about their social, emotional, physical, and creative development as we are about their academic growth. We consciously work with children on their decision-making processes and their interactions with others. We teach and encourage a coNFLict resolution approach to disagreements. Our instruction recognizes the present and future need for children to become keen problem identifiers, problem solvers, critical thinkers, and creative innovators. These skills are introduced to very young children and honed as they grow older.
• Use of technology and on-line resources is an integral part of our classroom and our curriculum. Computers are utilized as tools rather than as a subject in themselves.
• In keeping with our focus on values, we involve children in real and relevant experiences in the school and in the larger community to help them develop a personal ethic and put it into practice. Within this context we offer a service learning program, opportunity for off site projects for older children, and multiple opportunities to work on projects that make a difference in our world.