Maxey Academy is a working homeschool with a serious purpose — to form children whose minds are sharp, whose hearts are tender, and whose lives are ordered around the Lord Jesus Christ. We read old books and ask new questions, the way Christians have taught for two thousand years.
To form children of unusual depth, attention, and joy — who can read difficult things, argue well, think for themselves, and love what is true because they have learned to love its Author.
The Academy was founded in two thousand eleven around a kitchen table, an earnest reading list, and the conviction that an education ordered around Christ deserves more care than it usually gets. The work has continued, in continuous operation, ever since.
In MMXXV the Academy's first student matriculated to her university and, four years later, was graduated summa cum laude. The proof, as ever, is in the work — and in the children who follow her, still at their books.
Founded
Years
First Alumna
Grammatica
Memory, wonder, and the building blocks of every subject. Phonics, the multiplication tables, the books of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. The years when knowing the names of things is its own pleasure.
Dialectica
The discovery that everything connects. Formal logic, expository writing, the workings of governments and ecosystems, the structure of biblical argument. Then how do we know? — and we begin to answer them seriously.
Rhetorica
Expression made beautiful and precise. Original research, classical languages, the great debates, a defended thesis. The student renders, by graduation, a Christian account of what she has learned.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.”
Psalm 19:1
Varies by the hour, the snack supply, and whether the cat is involved.
Florida sun policy: it's nice, go outside.
Cumulative since founding. Some were Calvin & Hobbes.
We use a hand bell. It belonged to a great-grandmother.
The library at Maxey Academy is whatever room we happen to be in. The list below represents volumes in active service across our forms — read aloud, read silently, and (in the case of one volume) read every morning without fail.
The Full Curriculum →by as inspired
by Beatrix Potter
by C. S. Lewis
by Kenneth Grahame
by Susan Wise Bauer
by Madeleine L'Engle
by J. R. R. Tolkien
by Homer
by John Bunyan
by C. S. Lewis
by George MacDonald
The first reason is that we love our children. The second is that we love the Lord who made them and entrusted them to us. The third is that we love what they might become. The fourth — harder to put plainly — has something to do with the conviction that an education is not a service one purchases. It is a relationship, a long one, conducted around a kitchen table and ordered around the Word of God.
Maxey Academy began in two thousand eleven, the year we decided we wanted something different. Not better, necessarily; just deliberate, and rooted. We borrowed from the classical tradition because we found, after some looking, that nobody had improved upon it. We borrowed from Charlotte Mason because she was right about narration. We borrowed from the great prep schools because dignity in the daily routine teaches its own quiet lesson. And we kept Christ at the center because we believe Him to be the center of everything.
What you'll find here is a record of an ongoing experiment — one we take very seriously and not seriously at all, often in the same hour. Fifteen years in, with one graduate accounted for and several more on the bench, we remain at our work, and grateful for it.
A. Maxey
Head of School
Anno MMXXVI
We're not taking applications — we're raising a family. But we're happy to talk about the curriculum, the books, the difficulty of teaching Latin to a six-year-old who would rather be a paleontologist, or what it means to do this work as Christians.
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