About us

Russian School and Studio KARANDASH was established by UCI parents at the University of California, Irvine in 2003.  Our mission is to advance our children academically following best traditions of Russian education system.  Our organization presents a unique opportunity for your child to be exposed to rich Russian culture and to develop and maintain Russian language skills.

Our highly qualified instructors use innovative curriculum based on Russian standard school programs.  We successfully teach RUSSIAN LANGUAGE, RUSSIAN LITERATURE, MATH, MATH-CIRCLE, 
PHYSICS, RUSSIAN HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY in accordance with Russian secondary school standards and programs.  Our staff also instructs in ART, MUSIC and THEATER.  We use immersion method, all instruction is in Russian only.

We are open to ideas of teaching other languages and exposing our students to world cultures. UKRANIAN was our first experiment last year.  FRENCH is in plans as well.

Russian school KARANDASH is also a team of kids, parents and volunteers that produces shows, makes costumes and stage designs, organizes excursions, and celebrates traditional holidays together.

We write poems and stories in Russian. We watch Russian children’s movies and discuss them.  We play Russian traditional games and make our best effort not to use English one day a week on Saturdays.  School KARANDASH offers full immersion into the Russian language and culture following the highest standards of Russian educational traditions.

Our students are fully bilingual, they speak, write and read fluent Russian!