Science
As any parent knows, children love to ask questions and our schools capitalize on our scholars’ natural curiosity with a hands-on approach to science. We are one of the only schools to offer science 5 days a week starting in Kindergarten. By the end of Kindergarten, our scholars will have conducted 135 experiments. Scholars receive 50-minute lessons in a dedicated science lab every day!
At Success Academy we incorporate the three main disciplines of science—Life, Physical and Earth—into every year. That means that on any given day, a scholar could be dissecting a squid, collecting data on plant growth, building a pulley, programming a robot or even conducting scratch tests to identify minerals! Through this kind of hands-on experimentation, our scholars use their five senses to better understand the world around them.
Life Science
Scholars study plants by observing their growth, dissecting their parts and comparing their different methods of reproduction. Every year plant units get more and more rigorous and by 3rd grade, scholars are learning about photosynthesis! Scholars study a different animal every year, conducting "“fair tests” to determine in what kind of habitat the animals belong. We also expose our scholars to animals that go through metamorphosis. Scholars watch as caterpillars and mealworms enter the pupa phase and then emerge as very different adults!
Physical Science
Scholars learn the fundamentals of physics by building robots and simple machines. In Kindergarten, scholars program Bee-Bots to move across the room and hold “dance” competitions with their bots. By 5th grade, scholars are building and programming LEGO Mindstorm robots.
Earth Science
Scholars learn about the Earth not from a textbook, but by observing the world around them. They learn about the Earth's rotation by literally going outside and observing the sun's apparent motion across the sky. For example, they use drawings of their own shadows over time to back up their claims that as the Earth rotates, the sun appears to move in the sky.
