Early Elementary
2025-26 School Year
Daily Schedule
Early Elementary Schedule:
9:00-10:00 AM:
The early elementary class begins its day with Math and English Language Arts from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. Every student has a customized education plan and curricula binder for Math and ELA, and is working through that material at the most suitable pace for that child. At Paisano Tutoring, Math and ELA instruction takes place individually, one-on-one, rather than as a class, so that children are free to accelerate without being held back by the pace of their peers, and likewise, so that children are not pushed forward prematurely while still lacking mastery of foundational skills and concepts. The student-teacher ratio for the early elementary class at Paisano Tutoring never exceeds 3:1. Paisano Tutoring ELA for early elementary includes phonics, reading, writing, grammar, spelling, and cursive penmanship. A homework folder with Math and ELA is sent home with the child every day, and the quantity of homework is based on what is agreed upon with the parents, which varies with each child.
10:00-10:15 AM:
At 10:00 a.m., the early elementary students take a break from their seatwork to enjoy a story together. Some of the stories are read aloud by the instructor, and some of the stories are at an appropriate reading level for the students to take turns reading the story aloud to the group. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, we read stories related to Church History (Lives of the Saints), American History, Geography, or the liturgical life of the Church. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we read stories related to science and the natural world. For science stories, we generally read books that correspond to our unit of study in our science class at 10:15 a.m. (View our reading list thus far for this school year.) Students of Paisano Tutoring are also welcome to check out books from the Paisano Tutoring Library to read at home with their parents.
10:15-10:45 AM:
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the students have Greek class with Miss Ioanna. This is an academic first-year Greek program in which students are learning to read and write polytonic modern Greek. Though the class is only three days a week, the students receive a page of Greek homework daily in their homework folder.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, students do a science-related activity after listening to stories about science and the natural world. We are loosely following the early elementary science curricula: Science Chunks and Biology for the Grammar Stage, both by Elemental Science.
10:45-11:00 AM:
For the last fifteen minutes of class, students (who have completed their seatwork for the day and have done their homework from the previous day) have the opportunity to work on their Lego project. Every early elementary student has a drawer containing their current LEGO project, which they can start and stop easily each day. Paisano Tutoring has a large library of over 100 Lego “City”, “Technic,” and “Creator” kits, from which early elementary students can choose to build.
Homework Folders:
The early elementary students take home a daily homework folder containing Math, ELA, and Greek. All work done at home is returned to class the following day and is checked by the Paisano Tutoring staff. Any pages that are incomplete or have mistakes are completed and corrected in class. Students earn stars on their star chart for completed, corrected work. Students’ completed, corrected work is collected in a binder and returned to the student at the end of each 6 weeks. Completed work is also made available to parents in the form of a PDF posted on the student’s portal (a private password-protected webpage).