MARYSVILLE – Watching parents pick up their kids at Evangel Classical School is reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie.

It definitely feels like family. Children, no matter the age, run to hug their parents. A tall 11th-grade boy plays catch with a football with a little first-grader. A big dog wanders around looking for anyone to pet him.

Evangel is a private school of 57 children in grades kindergarten through 12th grade. It started five years ago with 12 kids from six families in a basement in Granite Falls. It now uses the Reclamation Church Tuesdays through Fridays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. They are home-schooled on Mondays. It graduated its first class of three last spring. The start and end of school start with a common gathering. In the morning they have a prayer, flag salute, sing a hymn, say the Apostle’s Creed, then go to class.

All the students, yes even high schoolers, go out for recess – all wearing uniforms. The older kids often play with their younger siblings. They also all eat lunch together.

Graduates receive a homeschool diploma.

“They have the tools to learn everything to equip them for the next level,” whatever that may be, headmaster Jonathan Sarr said.

Since it’s a Christian school, grades K-6 take a bible class, while grades 7-12 the bible is taught as part of each class. “There is no way accurately to understand creation and history while denying God’s existence,” a letter from the school says.

Sarr said there are three full-time teachers and eight part-time, including himself. Most of the teachers have students attending the school.

Parents choose the school most often because of the small student-teacher ratio and due to the world-view education. With the smaller class sizes, Differentiated Instruction is easier, along with cross-curriculum of subjects.

“We don’t divorce history from English” for example, Sarr said. “We can dial it back or ratchet it up.”

The curriculum is not easy. Students in the first grade learn cursive writing, something many public schools have stopped. They also start to learn Latin, which continues in later grades. First-graders also learn music literacy.

All of the students take choir. Sarr’s wife, Sonya, is the director. “It’s so good for the brain,” Sarr said, adding the outflow of expression is a key part of worship.

By the time they reach high school, they are reading college-level books such as “Odyssey” and “Beowulf.” Sarr said they don’t have to “sell these kids” on reading tough books. “We turn them loose.”

He added that the teachers help them love the curriculum.

“You’d think phonics for kindergarteners is the coolest thing on the planet,” he said.

Kim Ludd of Arlington teaches one of the kindergarten classes, one her son is in. She said two things stand out on why she loves the school. One is that it is integrated. “They get deeper into it and apply it to life.”

She also appreciates the spiritual aspect of it.

“We love that God is in it all,” she said. “It’s not ignored here.”

Dineke Bour was back at the school recently, even though she graduated last year. She is attending a beauty school.

“I love working with people and making them feel beautiful,” she said of her career choice.

As for going to ECS, she called it, “Phenomenal. You can’t get a better education.”

She enjoyed reading about history, not from history books, but from the actual authors. “It made me want to learn more about the world,” she said. Even though she’s out of school, she said she listens to audio tapes in her car.

“There’s so much to know,” Bour said.

Sarr, who came to the school from Grace Academy in Marysville, said it’s important at the school for students to have fun.

“God would have us be happy,” he said, adding that with God, “We are on the winning side.”

Toward that end, the school mascot is a Raggart, which looks like a rhinoceros-dragon mix.

“The raggart is so ridiculous to look at that it reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously,” Sarr said.

Along with that, the school’s motto is, “Risus est Hellum, or Laughter is War,” meaning sometimes it’s not easy to be happy, but be it anyway.

What is ECS?

An ECS pamphlet says the public school system is a dismal failure, with moral breakdowns, illiteracy rates and declining test scores – despite more money being thrown at it for facilities and faculty.

With the ECS teaching style, they are “equipping children for the future with what has been successful in the past,” a pamphlet on the school says.

It uses the trivium approach to learning:

•From kindergarten through sixth grade is the grammar stage. They are fed a bunch of facts and the information is soaked in like sponges. They master the facts, which is the foundation for later learning. “They’re wired so we fill their heads with information whether they understand it or not,” Sarr said.

•From seventh to ninth grade is the dialectic, or logic, stage. At that age they like to question, argue and challenge ideas. They develop reasoning skills learning logic.

•From 10th to 12th grade is the rhetoric stage. They learn skills to wisely and effectively present their knowledge. The pamphlet goes on to say the students learn Latin for many reasons: it teaches analytical skills, 50 percent of English words come from Latin, and it helps in successful professional fields such as law and medicine. Students who learn it also often do better on college entrance exams.

Graduates from Association of Classical and Christian Schools also often score higher on those exams. “No other educational approach is academically outperforming classical Christian education,” it says

About ECS

•Founded in 2012

•Kindergarten is biggest class with nine

•Students come from 10 local churches

•Students come from 23 local families.

•For details go to evangelcs.org