Lower School (TK–4th Grade)
Hausner’s lower school program offers students high quality instruction in reading, writing, math, social studies, and science.
Teachers integrate subject areas together across the curriculum, and offer students the chance to work with partners on hands-on projects, designed to engage and motivate. Most days start with a morning meeting to develop and support the classroom community.
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Curriculum Highlights
TK
Outstanding support for your child during their first years of education is essential to establishing the skills and confidence that lead to success in life.
Transitional Kindergarten (TK) students are part of a caring community of learners who engage in learning guided by the cycle of inquiry. The children enjoy integrated learning that includes language arts, mathematics, science, social emotional learning and more, in a developmentally appropriate way. We meet the children where they are, and support them in growing to their highest potential. Our TK program offers children an engaging environment where they will be nurtured and celebrated while they learn, play, create, and build relationships with their peers and teachers.
Special Highlights include:
Scientific Inquiry
Using the Inquiry-Based Learning Model, students explore nature through walks, observing seasonal changes, trees, bugs, and planting gardens. They collect and create with natural materials.
SEL—Social-Emotional Learning
Topics include identifying and managing feelings, conflict resolution, self-soothing techniques, empathy, and discussing friendship, inclusion, diversity, and tolerance through stories and activities.
Jewish Studies
Students learn Jewish values such as respect, mitzvot, Tzedakah, friendship, and making good choices. They celebrate holidays with stories, songs, and art projects, focusing on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Shabbat, while exploring Biblical stories, particularly Genesis, throughout the year.
Kindergarten
In Kindergarten, children develop new skills academically, socially, and emotionally. Hausner faculty and staff are there to encourage and guide this remarkable transformation.
Each day begins with a morning meeting to set the stage for active and joyful learning. The Jewish calendar guides the curriculum and comes to life through song, vocabulary development, and creative expression through art. Children enjoy physical activity and free, unstructured play.
Children begin the reading process and explore a wide selection of literature. Their natural curiosity lends itself to a stimulating STEM program that encourages students to investigate, experiment, gather and organize data, and draw conclusions based on their observations. In math, students set out on explorations that lay a foundation for more advanced mathematical development throughout their years at Hausner.
Special Highlights include:
Kinder-Garden
The "Kinder Garden" project engages kindergarten students in creating and maintaining a garden. The project is hands-on, integrating various subjects, and designed to be developmentally appropriate.
Ir Shalom (City of Peace)
This project-based learning experience begins with the question: How can we build a peaceful Jewish city? Students plan and construct their own buildings while learning about community, architecture, transportation, and social services. Read this blog post to learn more about our Ir Shalom project.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Black History Month
Students explore the Civil Rights leader in his historical context, while examining the reality of their lives today.
1st Grade
An exciting year of new beginnings, our 1st Grade students grow academically, socially, emotionally, and physically. They also become more independent and contributing members of our classroom community.
Our students develop good reading habits through fluency, phonics, and comprehension. They improve their addition and subtraction, measurement skills, and calendar and time-telling skills, and prepare for multiplication, division, and money skills.
Exploring the world around them, they delve into plants and animal life, the movement of the sun and stars, and the science of light and sound.
Special Highlights include:
Farms Unit
Students learn about farm life and raise funds for Animal Assisted Happiness.
Early America
In preparation for Thanksgiving, students examine the Pilgrims—who they were, why they came to the New World, and what they experienced once they arrived—as well as Native American culture and traditions.
Rainforest Bake Sale
Students study the layers of the rainforest, the animals who live there, and learn about – and create a bake sale to support – preservation efforts.
Sidur Ceremony
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2nd Grade
Second grade is a time of transition, when students learn to apply and build on the skills learned in TK, Kindergarten and 1st Grade. They are able to read more fluently and write more prolifically. Our teachers encourage children to feel comfortable with the skills that come easily, and to also work hard in the areas that challenge them.
Second grade academics are full of a variety of learning. We read and write biographies, explore personal narratives, build our students’ fluency, deepen their reading comprehension, and nurture their love of literature. Our students learn how to fluently count, add, subtract and solve word-problems, using numbers up to 1,000. They begin to tackle multiplication, and become adept at measurements, money, time, graphs, shapes, and patterns. It is not just about computation, but deeply understanding the concepts and being able to share your knowledge with others.
In social studies, we explore the world, learn about different cultures, and learn more about their family's history and culture.
In science, we reinforce their skills in making hypothesis and staying curious in the world. We learn about animals, plants, different phases and forms of matter, as well as earth's erosion.
Special Highlights include:
Seven Continents
Students “travel” to all seven continents during the year, exploring each one in unique projects.
Biography Project
We study biographies, and students get to choose a famous person to study, create a book about their life, and culminate the project with a three-dimensional diorama to depict a scene from their subject's life.
Heritage Potluck
Students uncover a family recipe that is important to their family and then share it with their community – as part of a cookbook and during a festive potluck.
3rd Grade
Students begin to take a greater role in their own learning, and to see that learning extends beyond the classroom walls. Our teachers provide clear structure and expectations so that every student can feel successful.
Our students embrace reading, enjoying fiction, narrative writing, and opinion pieces, and sharpen their grammar. To promote high-level thinking, our students learn how to not only solve math problems, but also to explain and justify their solutions.
The theme, “Continuity and change,” guides our students’ exploration into Native American culture, community growth and development, and community activism.
Special Highlights include:
Cardboard Arcade
By designing and building cardboard arcade games, students learn about magnetism, gravity, forces, and enrich their collaboration skills.
Community Studies
How do environments and their resources shape peoples’ lifestyles, habits, traditions, and values? Our students explore this question while studying our community’s environment, history, features, and issues.
Kabbalat Torah
In our special Kabbalat Torah celebration, students receive their own Torahs amid music and dance. Families are invited to participate in this momentous occasion.
4th Grade
Our 4th graders take more responsibility for their words and actions, and recognize that there are consequences – both good and bad – to what they say and do. Using critical teaching strategies, we support our students in becoming more independent learners and individuals.
In addition to tackling fractions and mixed numbers, decimals, shape area and perimeter, and symmetry, they learn how to further express themselves in writing by crafting fiction, opinion pieces, and essays. Our students enrich their knowledge of our local communities, exploring the natural resources of California, Native American tribes, the Spanish Rancho and Gold Rush periods, and the Transcontinental Railroad.
Special Highlights include:
Bridges
What makes a bridge strong, and how do we, as architects and engineers, design and build a sturdy bridge with limited time and money? Students, in the roles of architects and engineers, build a small-scale model of a bridge out of toothpicks and glue. Prior to construction, students design and draw blueprints. Bridges must be completed with limited time and money.
Gold Rush Trip
Hausner fourth graders rise to the challenge – and joy – of the multisensory, multidisciplinary gold rush journal project. They study the sources, learn the facts, hear the stories, and then tap into their imaginations to travel back in time and create their very own gold rush narratives and keepsakes. During the exciting field trip that follows, our students explore gold country, including the Capitol Building, Railroad Museum, an old schoolhouse, and a replica of John Sutter’s sawmill.
Compassion to animals
The mitzvah of Tza’ar Ba’alei Chayim (preventing suffering of animals) exhorts us to reduce the Suffering of Animals. During this Jewish Studies unit a journey is taken from students’ personal predilections towards animal rights to a deep dive into texts of our tradition to the creation of a position paper on modern uses of animals to participation in Lincoln-Douglas style debates. This unit offers students an opportunity to connect our ancient wisdom to modern ethical dilemmas.
Looking for in-depth curriculum information?
Download Our School Curriculum Guide
Haunser is CAIS (California Association of Independent Schools) and WASC (Western Association of Schools and Colleges) accredited.
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