“Nest Christian is now well-known and highly regarded in our local community”
Suzanne Anderson
Enter the science of reading, a research-backed approach that emphasizes the importance of phonics.
According to the National Reading Panel, “Phonics instruction produces significant benefits for children’s reading abilities.” This statement is supported by a statistic indicating that students who receive systematic phonics instruction perform better in reading by nearly 10 percentile points compared to those who don’t.
Phonics is more than just memorizing the alphabet; it’s about understanding the relationship between letters and sounds. The research by Dr. Linnea Ehri, a renowned expert in reading development, reinforces this idea. She states, “Phonics instruction helps children decode words accurately, a crucial skill for fluent reading.” This decoding ability is fundamental for early readers as it enables them to tackle new words independently.By Cait Harding
The Nest Christian Academy didn’t happen overnight. Opening on the heels of a local church-based preschool closure, the school in Argyle, Texas has grown to shepherd more than 100 early ed children into loving Jesus.
The school’s leadership has always shared the vision of inspiring and fostering knowing and serving Jesus in the hearts, minds, and souls of children who attend Nest Christian. They do this through academically strong, Bible character-trait-based curriculum.
Suzanne Anderson, the school’s founder and its initial curriculum visionary, shared that the team is comprised of true innovators in early childhood education.
“When we opened the school in 2017, we were committed to creating excellent, biblically based curriculum and pairing it with cutting-edge academic instruction,” she said. “Our passionate team has shared this mission from the first day.”
At the beginning, Suzanne was joined by educational leader, Kendra Estrada. Both shared educational resources, ideas and strategies. A few months later, Crystal Grant, an experienced curriculum writer and teacher, brought her expertise to the team.
Together, they conducted a thorough review of marketplace offerings, determining that no suitable curriculum products were available. As such, they set about building their own, ensuring they incorporated a Christian worldview.
“If we don’t teach children to follow Christ, the world will teach them not to,” Anderson shared.
The team set a lofty vision, which presented quite a challenge for a start-up preschool. However, they were ready to fight the good fight. The journey began with developing a curriculum that met their spiritual and academic objectives.
“First, young learners were led through God’s Word beginning with developmentally appropriate lessons in creation and culminating with the story of God’s plan to rescue His children,” Anderson said. “We integrated a strong academic component and spent years classroom testing and evaluating the curriculum.”
The program grew strong—so strong that the local community took….
