Oak Hill Christian School

America 250 + 169 !

What we celebrate in 2026 actually began, not 250 years ago, but in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.

As Jamestown and eventually the 13 colonies were established, the elite in Europe considered America to be insignificant. They drove our forefathers away from their shores by refusing to tolerate their particular Christian religious practices and by perpetuating a state of political and religious convulsions.

Some of my students recently read the great author, Friedrich von Gentz. He tells how the single favor given to each of the colonies was to be left to itself in a distant wasteland. However, by 1776 this distant wasteland had become a prosperous place with living standards rivaling those of Europe.

Gentz describes the phenomenon of this unexpected greatness coming…by the peculiar, creative energy of a rapidly growing mass of enterprising and indefatigably active men, favored by an extensive, fruitful, and happily situated territory; by simple forms of government…and by profound peace…

This roused the Europeans with sudden violence. Parliament wanted jurisdiction that it never had.

You see 1776 wasn’t the beginning. At that time a godly and well educated people studied and saw what God had given them. We all love the fun story about vandalizing tea, but mostly Americans worked thoughtfully through their own civil authorities, 13 colonial governments established lawfully over almost two centuries.

1776 was a defense of what they had built for 169 years, their communities, their churches, their way of life, their colonial governments. It was a limited war breaking their feudal bonds with a king who utterly refused to carry out his lawful and binding duty to defend them against Parliament.

1776 was an important year! Let’s celebrate it as the time our American governments properly defended the blessings that had been given to us.

--Robert Thoburn

OH Pre-Algebra Students Create A Model of God’s Mathematical Order

Strange symbols with no tangible meaning, mental gymnastics to turn multiple large numbers into one, and mindless processes where one small slip-up renders your result useless. Is that all math is? It’s no wonder students learn to hate math, and such a pity too, because math is one of God’s most beautiful creations. This last week the Oak Hill pre-algebra class painted a little corner of that beauty. With glue and paper they put together this model, the 56th stellation of the icosahedron, an enfleshment of God’s mathematical order in symmetry.

Polyhedra (the name for the broader class of 3D objects like the model we made) have deep roots in math. From the time of the Greeks math was synonymous with Geometry, and not just Geometry on paper, but in space. The five most basic polyhedra are even called the “Platonic Solids” after the Greek mathematician and philosopher Plato, and polyhedra have been continually studied up to this day. The shape we built, in fact, was only recently enumerated in 1938.

But where is the benefit? One might wonder. Isn’t math supposed to be practical? While many branches of math eventually become practical due to the order God has encoded into our world, to limit Math to the cold and practical is to skip over the juiciest bits of the meat! Math is the study of order, a concept nearly equivalent to beauty. What makes a painting pretty? Or a poem pleasing? It is its ordered structure. In math, we practice recognizing and applying order; we teach ourselves to think along abstract frameworks, and prepare ourselves for any such systems in the future. Whether drawing, speaking, or designing rockets, a true mathematician who has been taught to think in order will do it best.

This is why we build polyhedra; we are building an object of order (note the shape's symmetry and color scheme, which though at first puzzling, reveals its order upon inspection). You could of course gain much by observing the shape, but to build it forces the mind into a deeper understanding. As we build different leaves and look for shortcuts we discover patterns a simple observer wouldn’t: the outer circles are the same order of color as the points they surround, just rotated; the junction of three cups always uses some color three times; these observations teach ordered thought better than reps of ratio problems ever could.

God has not made a chaotic world; sloth doesn’t become money, fish don’t become men, and men don’t become women. In a culture as confused as ours, it is imperative the next generation is trained in order, so they can see modern mythology for what it is. The world doesn’t need more people catechized in multiplication facts, it needs polyhedron builders.

by Caleb Thoburn, OH 2025. Caleb is a rising sophomore at New Saint Andrews College. He has loved and studied math all his life.

Raising Kids Who Will not be Conquered by Islam

10,000 Muslims just attended Eid al-Fitr in Pennsylvania Amish country. Virginia has 136 new mosques and a fast growing number of followers of Islam. And, these people are voting progressives in, getting elected themselves, and even sponsoring radical new laws from Richmond.

Mostly we’ve been welcoming them in with Federal, state and local policies. Even the school boards, which for a generation have been watering down and secularizing every Christian holiday and teaching, have now taken to honoring and getting our kids accustomed to a host of pagan feast days.

These people must be laughing as they realize our culture isn’t much of a match.

We need to raise a generation that shapes Christian culture. A privileged and slack people who don’t distinguish ideas or beliefs cannot compete. We need to equip our young men and women to be ones who think clearly, who fight pagan ideas joyfully, who vote for good candidates, who run for office and who feast and raise families and build institutions worthy of the Gospel. These are the kind that will not be conquered by Islam.

Robert Thoburn Oak Hill Christian School www.oakhillk12.com

The most delicious day of the year, International Day in PreK!

The students dress in traditional clothing, each of his family's heritage, and parents send in dishes of delicious foods.

Countries ranged from Mexico to Thailand to India and more.

The students also sing their geography songs and play.

It's such a joyful way to end the school year, feasting together!

🐢Turtles and cranes and ducks, oh my! 🦆

The PreK class went to the pond and saw all kinds of wild life!

Once they were back in the classroom, they took down their field notes. 🤗

Oh, to be a child in awe of God’s beautiful world.

We may not be able to travel to Greece and Rome with our elementary students to study classical architecture, but we have the next best thing. A city full of neoclassical architecture!

After studying Greek columns and structures and Rome arches and domes, some of the elementary students headed to D.C. to find examples of Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns as well as arches and domes.

What a way to end the school year! Sketching beautiful buildings, skipping in the sunshine and having a popsicle with your friends.

How do you feel about Shakespeare? Too difficult? Boring? In today’s culture of brief text messages and ultra high definition graphics, how can long passages filled with archaic language captivate audiences, especially an audience made up of children?

Continue reading:

OHCS Shakespeare Festival 2026 King Lear

OHCS Shakespeare Festival 2026 King Lear How do you feel about Shakespeare? Too difficult? Boring? In today’s culture of brief text messages and ultra high definition graphics, how can long passages fi

MIddle schoolers have been working on meticulus observations and drawings the way Leonardo Da Vinci made. Their assigment was to discover the 3 different ways leaves attach to their stems (opposite, alternate and whorled).

Success!

"Thou should'st not have been old till thou hadst been wise." -King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1

Our Shakespeare Festival this year featured scenes and lessons on wisdom, folly and flattery from King Lear.

In addition to entertaining their younger schoolmates, the upper school students hosted games, dances and crafts.

It was a joy to watch even our youngest students enjoy Shakespeare.