Curiosity Grove Academy

♟️ Introducing CGA Clubs: Free Chess Club for Homeschoolers!

Curiosity Grove Academy is launching CGA Clubs, starting with a free chess club for homeschool families in the Grand Junction area!

🗓️ When: Every other Monday, starting September 14
⏰ Time: 2:00–3:00 PM
♟️ Skill Level: All welcome — beginners through experienced players
🎒 Grades: K–8
💵 Cost: Free

Kids will build strategy skills, sharpen their thinking, and connect with other homeschoolers over a great game. No experience necessary!

📩 Comment below or message our page for location details and to get on the list.

We're two weeks in and it's going beautifully — but we still have a few spots open at Curiosity Grove Academy this fall!

Whether your child needs structured mornings, hands-on enrichment afternoons, or a full day of both — we have a place for them.

🌅 Core Mornings (M–Th) — mastery-based literacy & math, small group, multi-age K–6 | $250/mo
🔬 Enrichment Afternoons (M–Th, 1–3pm) — Science, Art, History Mysteries & STEAM Challenges | $250/mo
🌳 Full Day — both morning & afternoon | $450/mo

Your child gets the structure and community of school. You keep the flexibility of homeschool.

DM us or email [email protected] to schedule a tour.

Last week’s History Mystery: what was the Age of the Dinosaurs?

Kids read about the character’s real dinosaur discovery, then got their own mystery — a bag of wooden fossil pieces, some missing parts, some broken. Just like the book, nobody’s dig was neat and complete.

Once they’d pieced their creature together, they wrote their own story about it — comic strips full of plot, dialogue, and more than a few dramatic “ROAR!“s.

Read like a scientist. Dig like a scientist. Tell the story only you can tell.

Stay curious. Keep growing.

Kids don’t need a lecture on story structure to feel it. They already know Percy Jackson has to leave home and face something bigger than himself, because so does Odysseus, so does Harry, so does the dragon in Wings of Fire. Reading across these books side by side, they start noticing the pattern themselves — and once they see it, they see it everywhere, in every story after.

That’s what book club is really for: not just reading more, but reading closer.

Today’s mystery: what did a creature look like millions of years before cameras, before drawings, before anyone was around to see it? Kids had to think like paleontologists — using only clues (bones, teeth, footprints) to reconstruct something no living person has ever laid eyes on.

Then they built their own answer. Pom-poms, pipe cleaners, googly eyes — every creature a different theory of what might have roamed the earth.

That’s the real skill here: reading evidence, making inferences, and being willing to be wrong. Which, it turns out, is exactly what real paleontologists do.

Stay curious. Keep growing.

Day one, and we’re already discovering fossils. 🦖

Molds and casts, made by pressing tracks into clay and pouring plaster. Then of course we were chiseling tiny “dinosaurs” out of hardened rock. Two ways the earth holds onto the past — and today, our crew got to hold them too.

Take a look at our math shelf. Pattern blocks, unifix cubes, color tiles, geo blocks, attribute blocks, measuring tools — the variety isn’t clutter, it’s intentional.

Here’s why: a child doesn’t really understand what “3 more than 5” means until they’ve moved objects to make it true. Manipulatives make abstract math concrete — literally something you can hold, stack, sort, and see. And different tools teach different things. Unifix cubes are great for counting and building number sense. Pattern blocks open the door to fractions and geometry. Color tiles make patterns and multiplication visual. Geo blocks bring in 3D thinking.

You don’t need a shelf like this at home to give your child that same concrete experience — buttons, coins, pasta, blocks you already have all work. The point isn’t the fancy materials, it’s the hands-on connection between the idea and the object.

What’s something your kid loves counting, sorting, or building with at home?

CGA runs lean — we’re a small school built on big creativity, and every year our classroom wish list grows right alongside our students. If you’ve ever wanted to be part of what we’re building here, this is an easy way to help.

Our Amazon wish list includes things like STEM robot building kits and digital microscopes for hands-on science, math games like Buffalo and Adsumudi Fun Ones, decodable books for our reading groups, sensory tools for our youngest learners, and even a new book display shelf for our classroom library — all picked because we know exactly how they’ll get used with our kids.

Any item, big or small, makes a real difference. Thank you for being part of the village that makes Curiosity Grove possible. 💛

Check out my list on Amazon

There's no one way to learn math at CGA.

Some kids need manipulatives — something to hold and move and count. Some need a whiteboard where they can write big and erase without pressure. Some need a textbook with a clear sequence. Some need all three on the same day.

We don't let dyscalculia or learning differences stop a kid from getting there. We just keep looking for the way that works with their brain.

That's not a special program. That's just how we teach.

This past year kids built solar-powered cars from kits — reading instructions, problem-solving when pieces didn't fit, starting over when something went wrong.

That last part might be the most important thing we teach.