Learning Beyond Our Campus

Learning beyond our campus provides students in all grades with opportunities to experience the world around them.

Lower School

Lessons come to life as Lower School students explore the world around them.  Fourth graders see the impact of conflict as they visit the Revolutionary War battleground at Cowpens.  Third graders visit Walnut Grove Plantation, linking the past and the present to answer the question, “Why does history matter?”  Second graders shadow an adult at work as part of their unit on occupations.  Human nutrition comes to life as first graders visit Happy Cow Creamery or tour a local Publix.  Primers come to understand the importance of recycling while visiting a nearby landfill.

These trips are more than just a day outside the classroom – they are seamless extensions of the curriculum that engage students’ natural curiosity, encouraging them to ask, “why?”

Middle School

Fifth-graders are introduced to the Middle School – and to each other – during outdoor experiences early in the school year. Students engage in activities that focus on skills of cooperation and socialization. In addition, some activities serve as part of the follow-up to fifth grade summer reading of My Side of the Mountain. Later in the year, fifth-grade students spend two days studying the flora and fauna in western North Carolina.

Sixth-grade students travel to the North Carolina mountains for an overnight trip where they participate both in cooperative and leadership activities. In the spring, they spend three days exploring the South Carolina coastal environment at Barrier Island.

Seventh and eighth-grade students enjoy overnight trips that widen the scope of their classroom studies while also providing a recreational outlet. Along with their study of Colonial America in English and history classes, seventh-graders spend three days in Williamsburg, Virginia. Eighth-grade students visit Disney World and EPCOT, where they enjoy a physics-related tour, a world geography experience, and the Magic Kingdom.

These activities do more than merely enhance the curriculum. In addition to making wonderful memories for each class, trips engage our students physically, allowing them to bring their adolescent energies to the learning process, to solve problems in a "real-world" environment, and to bring an experiential dimension to classroom activities.

Summer opportunities, though varied each year, have recently included a student exchange with schools in Japan and a middle school program in southern England.

Upper School

The CCES Upper School is filled with exciting opportunities to see the world up close, from Greenville County to the other side of the globe.  

The Ninth Grade Mystery Trip bonds freshmen together during their first week of school by whisking them off for two days to a destination so secret that even their parents are not told exactly where they’re going until after the buses leave! Past classes have shared excursions to Key West, New York City, and the Outer Banks in North Carolina, where students literally soared through the air on a hang-gliding adventure.

Day long field trips associated with a class are a common ocurance in the Upper School.  In addition, students are invited to participate in trips all over the world.  Past student trips have included Spain, China, Germany and several others.