Elementary
Elementary Education is Anything but Elementary.
No period of growth and change compares to your child’s elementary school years. Once protected, loved and nurtured only at home, children now need to begin counting on relative strangers to care for them. Now there are expectations put on their lives. Rules are imposed, and the days are more structured. As the years go by, they begin to develop relationships outside of the family; they make friends, become members of one group or another, and often find a “best friend” whose opinions and values will mean as much as, if not more than, yours.
During these years, your child begins to show an independent spirit. Cultivating healthy self-esteem and self-confidence becomes critical. In these years, a young adult is being formed and molded. No, there is nothing elementary about a child’s elementary years, and nothing elementary about the educational choices you make for those years.
The Hillcrest Experience
At Hillcrest Christian Academy, students receive more than an education. Everything they learn is filtered through Biblical truth, supporting and enhancing the Christian lifestyle they experience at home and through their church.
Academically, children are taught:
- using award-winning A Beka Book curriculum
- using additional texts from other reputable Christian and educational publishers
- by Bible-believing Christians who are certified academically and some holding advanced degrees.
Subjects taught in the elementary grades include reading, phonics, math, science, history, spelling, health, and of course the Bible, which begins each day for the student.
Athletics and Fine Arts
Sports offered at the elementary grades include soccer and baseball, and basketball starts in the fourth grade for girls and boys.
Hillcrest Christian Academy offers a dynamic music and art program.
- Vocal music and the fundamentals of music are taught in every grade.
- Choice of an instrument is first offered at the fourth-grade level, as are free, semi-private, 30 minute lessons once a week.
- Hillcrest Band is open and encouraged for all interested students where they learn the fundamentals of performance.
Elementary students take part in two programs every year and parents are invited to enjoy the performance. Both programs are designed to build children’s self-esteem and public appearance skills.
- The Christmas concert is a musical celebration of God’s greatest gift in Christ.
- The Spring concert invites families to celebrate what their children have learned musically throughout the year.
Our project-based art curriculum inspires students’ creativity, fires their imagination, and fosters an appreciation of art. Students are introduced to the works of famous artists and exposed to a variety of techniques.
And as with every subject taught at Hillcrest, God is at the center of the Fine Arts program, as students learn that art and music are the human extensions of the creativity of an Almighty God.
13 years ago, we moved to the South Hills Area and had toured several Christian Schools to enroll our oldest daughter into preschool. We were drawn to HCA because of its Biblical Worldview, putting Christ first and providing a safe environment for our children to grow academically and spiritually. She is now a high school senior and after all these years, we have seen the steady commitment by HCA to continue teaching minds and training hearts of God’s children. We currently have 6 children enrolled at HCA and it is a tremendous blessing to be able to send them to a school where we can feel comfortable that they are receiving excellent academic instruction in a Christ-centered environment. HCA has been like family to us and we have grown together through the years. HCA has always had a mission and focus in serving its families in Christ’s love. The leadership is committed to placing Godly people in positions to carry on the mission for Jesus Christ. As Proverbs 22:6 says , “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it”. HCA embodies this verse with training that will last a lifetime! We have witnessed the transformation of HCA over the years with the expansion of the new high school wing providing education from K-12, the new science lab and computer lab, security upgrades with cameras and locked entry doors, technology upgrades in the classrooms, chromebooks for students and much more. It’s been an amazing 13 years and we are looking forward to the next 13!
-Bilsky Family