A Classical Beginning with Kindergarten at Great Hearts

For parents of young children, choosing a kindergarten isn’t just about one year of school. It’s about setting the stage for the next thirteen. That’s the message Headmaster Anthony Sciubba recently shared about the kindergarten program at Great Hearts, specifically at Archway Scottsdale.

“As a dad, I know how important it is to think through that most important decision of where you’re going to send our youngest scholars for their school,” shared Sciubba. “It is such an important decision, and it’s a sacred trust that we take very, very seriously.”

Families who enroll in kindergarten at Great Hearts step into a unified, integrated K‑12 educational experience. “You’re not only picking a kindergarten that’s good for your student right now. You’re picking a kindergarten that sets them up for success for the long term,” added Sciubba. Because Archway Scottsdale is the lower‐school companion to Scottsdale Prep, students move from phonics and picture books to Euclid and Shakespeare without changing the culture, curriculum, or community that first welcomed them.

Including classroom teachers, student support personnel, reading interventionists, specials instructors, and deans, Archway Scottsdale maintains the equivalent of one adult for every twelve students. “So, as your student goes throughout the day, they have a number of adult mentors in their life that are here to invest in them,” he explained. “This is what allows us to provide them with a completely customized educational experience so that we can teach to the top and yet offer all of our students the support that they need to rise to the challenge.”

In a classical model, the foundational arts, foreign language, and physical education are not extras. They are essentials. Kindergartners rotate through music, art, P.E., library, science lab, and Spanish each week. Sciubba emphasized that these classes are curricular themselves, forming the sensorial and imaginative foundation that later supports rhetoric, reasoning, and fine‐arts appreciation.

Kindergarteners at Great Hearts begin with Spalding phonics and Singapore Math, two research‑backed programs that lay solid groundwork for fluent reading and conceptual problem‑solving. “By joining kindergarten,” said Sciubba, “your student will have the foundational concepts … that are going to set them up for success as they move into first grade.”

Demand for seats at Archway Scottsdale is high. So high, in fact, that the current first‑grade waitlist is longer than the fourth‑ and fifth‑grade lists combined, a shift that Sciubba has seen in recent years. “In addition to enrolling in a context where your scholar can enjoy a supportive environment and learn those foundational skills that set them up for elementary, middle, and high school by joining in kindergarten, you also are able to secure your place in an environment that would otherwise be overenrolled.”

For more information about kindergarten and enrollment at Great Hearts, visit https://www.greatheartsamerica.org/enroll/enrolling-your-kindergarten-student/ .

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Submit a student application to a Great Hearts Academy by visiting: https://www.greatheartsamerica.org/enroll/.