Mission Statement

Ignite Institute for Early Learning is a warm and loving private preschool and kindergarten, operating in coordination with Torch Community Church. It is our mission to provide a supportive and nurturing learning environment where children are lovingly guided to grow physically, cognitively, emotionally, and spiritually. Our carefully crafted program is designed to provide the children in attendance with a superb framework for a successful transition to elementary school while also building a personal, meaningful, Christ-centered worldview.

Values and Approach

At Ignite, we desire to honor Christ in all aspects of our program, including our educational approach. To educate not just the mind, the entire person as a whole, we utilize the Charlotte Mason method. Charlotte Mason was a British author, teacher, and lecturer in the late 1800s. Her philosophy of education has persisted for over a century and has regained popularity recently, especially among a subset of private and homeschooling families. The Charlotte Mason educational model seeks to help students create positive habits that affect not just their schooling, but their lives. In her words, "Education is an Atmosphere, a Discipline, a Life."

Atmosphere...

The importance of parent-teacher cooperation & support!

By "atmosphere," Charlotte meant the surroundings in which the child grows up. While we are in a school setting and focus on the atmosphere in the classroom, we know that a child absorbs a significant amount of their ideas and values from their home environment. Charlotte believed that "the ideas that rule your life as the parent make up one-third of your child’s education."

Statistically, research supports this ideology. So we will gladly endeavor to get to know each of our students and their families so we can work cooperatively together in your child's education.

Discipline...

Lays an educational feast.

Charlotte said, "We spread an abundant and delicate feast, and each small guest assimilates what he can."

Presenting a plethora of learning subjects is the only way to ensure a child is well versed in just as many topics.

By "discipline," Charlotte also meant the discipline of good habits—specifically, habits of character. Cultivating good habits in a child’s life makes up another third of the child’s education. Therefore, we endeavor to instill good habits and routines for actions and attitudes that are grounded in Christian ethics and values.

Life...

Charlotte Mason said, "Never be within doors when you can rightly be without."

Charlotte believed that children should be given living thoughts and ideas, not just dry facts. So her methods for teaching the various school subjects are built around that concept. Therefore, we endeavor to turn academics into playful and fun learning experiences that are fully alive.

This approach uses short, intentionally focused lessons and time-frames to keep learning fun throughout the day! Learning stays alive when children move seamlessly from one activity to the next (guided by their teacher), continuously engaged in a dynamic atmosphere!

Educational Methodology

Ignite believes in a dynamic, experiential, and intentional approach to teaching and learning. This approach fosters children's intellectual development as they are encouraged to explore their environment and express themselves through words, movement, drawing, painting, playing, and other natural modes of expression. We promote an environment where children can develop the critical thinking and problem-solving skills necessary for a successful and meaningful life.

Ignite teachers engage children in activities focused on relationships and inquiry using "Living Methods." "Living Methods" mean...

• The environment has been designed to support rich learning experiences and holistic growth.

• We don't use dry textbooks, but books and materials written in story or narrative form that make subjects come alive. Children learn to tell back, or narrate in their own words, what they are learning as they practice using rich language, pointing out ideas they are gleaning from the materials, projects, and books, and demonstrating the mental connections they make between them and other ideas already residing in their growing minds and hearts.
• We encourage spending time outdoors, interacting with God’s creation firsthand, and learning the living ways of nature (weather permitting).

• We spread before the students a feast of ideas from a wide variety of sources—from art, to the Bible, to tramping through fields, to counting and math, to singing, to foreign languages, to handwriting, and much more for the purposes of helping them find the subjects they gravitate towards and posses strengths in, to gain knowledge and broader understanding in subjects they may be as yet under exposed to, and to gain a broad and well-rounded education.

• Throughout it all, we emphasize the habits of full attention, best effort, and learning for the sake of learning. It's all designed to help the child grow—for when we learn, we grow.