Looking Ahead to 2024-2025

Highlights

Much of what students and families have come to expect from Holy House will remain the same in the year to come: daily Mass, prayers throughout the day, House competitions, field trips, beautiful choir presentations and sung Masses, leadership opportunities, and families who mutually support our common mission as Catholics seeking to guide our children by living faithfully to the Magisterium to serve Christ our King.

Grades 1-4: We are actively redeveloping our programme for Grades 1-4 with an updated English language arts program and a dedicated Homeroom Teacher for both the Primary and Beginner divisions. This additional oversight and support will especially benefit students as they build their skills and knowledge to be well-prepared for the Junior and Intermediate years!
Grades 5-9: We are excited to be able to offer Literature classes in-person this coming year. This change will mean an adjustment to what is taught online in addition to Latin. This will most likely see Art History and Theory go online once per week along with English Grammar once per week. We hope to offer more focus on spoken and original writing in Latin at school to complement online Latin. Students can also look forward to an updated Art curriculum that will continue with our timeline-aligned studies but will focus more on developing foundational skills in drawing and painting under the tutelage of a master artist. The aim will be for our students to learn to see and produce beauty, analogous to a master voice coach teaching our children to both hear and produce beauty in our daily choir.

Ancient Year Curriculum (Draft)

Year I—Ancient 

Catholic: Our ancient-year curriculum will continue to make several improvements to our existing  Holy House curriculum, but always with the characteristic integration of faithful Catholicity throughout every subject and always aiming for that feeling of being part of a Holy House family of home at school and school at home. 

Mass and Prayers: As always, ancient-year curriculum will continue with the most important curriculum of the day: Ordinariate daily Mass. We are blessed to have excellent continuing and new faculty who joyfully promise to be faithful to the Magisterium. The themes emphasised through the prayers, scripture selections, saints, and psalms will first align with the church calendar, and secondarily with the ancient year content emphasising old testament readings and prophets in the theme of salvation history.

Catechism: Volume 1 of 4 of the Penny Catechism is being developed to focus on Salvation history in a way that integrates well with the ancient year program and is aligned, as always, with utmost faithfulness to the Magisterium. 

Choir: The choral music programme will continue largely  unchanged.  A Precum is being developed by those with extensive experience in the Ordinariate musical traditions which will allow us to continue with favourite hymns already learned, add some new hymns appropriate to the liturgy, and focus on the Old Testament and Salvation history. Prayers, scripture memorization, our traditional Mass setting,  and psalms will all be sequenced in a harmonious way and will be consistent with the requirements of the 2024-25 liturgical year. 

History in the Ancient world is varied and exciting, full of discoveries, adventure, and heroic and villainous men and women from the earliest account of written history up to and beyond the events that changed history: the birth, passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord. With a focus on salvation history in alignment with catechesis, History of the ancient world will be an epic adventure for every family as it interweaves with the deeds and writings of the Old Testament and the New, the great works of Greeks and barbarians, the fruitful tension between Jerusalem and Athens, and the classic insights into truth that set us on the road to spiritual salvation, moral clarity, artistic beauty, and scientific marvels.  

Latin will continue to be online and will follow the same Libellus Latinus (I-IV). Various options will be evaluated for students who have finished Latin IV. Ancient year Latin emphasis will be on Ancient Latin idioms and pithy Latin sayings emphasising salvation history in the Old and New Testament. 

English Grammar, Spelling, and Composition will be developed with an eye towards ease of use for students, parents, and teachers, appropriate sequencing, suitability for integration into Ancient year studies, and mutual support for Latin. A programme such as Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) will be highly effective, conducive to parental support, and can be flexibly customised for integration with Ancient year content and other subjects. For example, keyword outlines made about ancient heroes and stories, exemplary ancient art used as a prompt for story-writing, and so forth. With Literature discussion now done in-person, English Grammar may move to a once per week online format, similar to Latin.

Literature Seminars will take place in-person (vs online). We aim for the rich experience of practising various virtues such as self-control, good judgement, respect, courage, and love, as we learn to passionately but respectfully dialogue with one another in a seminar circle . We will use historically sequenced, time-honoured classic literary sources appropriate to each division including novels, poetry, nonfiction, plays, and so on.

Science will continue to use the same historical sequence in the Science in the Ancient World volume of Berean Builder Science Series (Jay Wile), with careful consideration given to curriculum requirements and a selection of lessons that are well-aligned both with other subjects and with the scientific lessons that will follow in the subsequent three years. We will continue to design our own in-house science workbooks that will serve as a study guide and help students make connections between related science and connections to history class, as well as help guide parents at home with relevant details of the experiment and theory. 

Art will help students develop through a systematic building of the basic skills of observation and artistic imitation as they learn to draw and paint with competence. Art theory and history may take the place of literature online, where students will get a chance to discuss and analyse the monthly focal piece of ancient art in the context of other ancient art. Time at home will then remain to build up elements of artistic skills in the student sketchbook. 

Physical Education will continue to have a strong focus on practising virtues in the context of both individual and team sports, with attention to building up specific elements of physical skill and good moral habits. Each student is encouraged to achieve personal excellence as they support their team in friendly competition with the other Houses.  

We look forward to releasing further details as development progresses. 

Active development is well underway!