Welcome to Punahou! We hope you enjoy this virtual tour of our campus.
Welcome!
Sidney and Minnie Kosasa Community for Grades 2 – 5
This community is a physical representation of Punahou’s educational philosophy for the 21st-century. It is teacher-inspired, student-centered and research-driven, and built to the highest levels of green building and design. Here are some features of the Community:
- Flexibility and fluidity in our indoor and outdoor spaces will allow teachers to engage with a greater variety of learning profiles while broadening opportunities to mix instructional techniques and age groups. Two-story classroom studios will reduce the overall building footprint, increasing the green and open spaces in this part of campus.
- From a native forest to edible gardens that recycle the waters of Ka Punahou, an outdoor landscape inspired by the Hawaiian ahupua‘a will support a curriculum grounded in our unique island culture and history. The diversity of outdoor spaces – from quiet nooks to active play areas – embraces learning that is experiential and fueled by children’s innate curiosity.
- Adhering to the highest levels of green design introduces the opportunity to include sustainability education in both indoor and outdoor spaces. Building on the successes of Case Middle School (LEED Gold) and the Omidyar K – 1 Neighborhood (LEED Platinum), we will take Punahou’s commitment to sustainability beyond building design and make it a learning experience for students.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.Kosasa Community Drop off and Pickup
Students are greeted by friendly faces each morning as they are helped out of their vehicles. This is the same location that kids are picked up from after school. Parents never need to exit their vehicle during drop-off or pickup.
Tip for parents: Having carseats placed on the right side of your vehicle makes the process safe, quick and efficient since children always enter and exit on the passenger’s side at Kosasa!
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Junior School Learning Commons
In the Junior School Learning Commons, students have access to innovative spaces and resources – technological, creative and human – to transform their questions into meaningful work that addresses authentic
challenges and audiences. Students and teachers from different grades and disciplines have opportunities to gather and collaborate in purposeful learning.
While this space is primarily used by students in kindergarten – grade 8, all Punahou students have access to the library’s 60,000 book catalog, giving them access to hardcopy books, e-books and online resources.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Design Technology Lab
The Design Technology and Engineering department is dedicated to empowering students to take purposeful action. They teach students to look for the educational opportunities in taking on the challenges that they encounter, discover and create. Students learn more deeply when they are engaged in solving problems and working on challenges that inspire them.
In kindergarten – grade 5, Design Technology is one of the regular specials all students participate in.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Flanders Dance Pavilion
Flanders Dance Pavilion is home to the Punahou Dance School and features three separate studios where instructional dance classes are offered after school and on weekends.
Physical education classes for grades 2 – 5 are also held here.
The Dance Pavilion is just one of many buildings where your child may have co-curricular classes.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Barwick Playground
Barwick Playground is the outdoor play area for students in grades 4 and 5. It was named after Frank Barwick.
In 1886, Barwick, a shipwrecked sailor, was hired to drive one of Punahou's horse-drawn buses. During the 38 years he remained at Punahou, Barwick took on many roles and was loved by all. Eventually he became superintendent of buildings and grounds and the elementary playground was named after him in later years.
Barwick Playground is also home to the Banyan Tree. The near century-old ficus has been adored by generations of Punahou students and alumni.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Kosasa Classrooms
The idea that learning is personalized in Kosasa classrooms means that every aspect of the building needs to be flexible enough to accommodate anything that comes up in a child’s mind. The classroom studios have moveable walls and the furniture is flexible so that the teachers can configure the space in lots of different ways to support all kinds of learners.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Art Studio
The Patrick H. Quilter Lab for Creative Arts houses an array of spaces – including music and art classrooms, a covered lanai for outdoor work, a ceramics kiln and an exhibit area – that support students learning to translate their questions, interests and passions into concrete forms.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Music Studios
Through a careful sequence of activities focused primarily on five elements of music – rhythm, melody, harmony, expression and form – children use critical thinking and creativity to read, write, perform, analyze and create music through active participation with a music specialist.
Speech, song, movement, instruments and other arts allow the children to explore music in a variety of ways to become confident, self-directed, lifelong learners.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Ka‘aumoana Halau
Ka‘aumoana, standing beside Ka Punahou – the spiritual, geographic and historic heart of campus – is a magical place where children play, sing, enjoy the outdoors, discover Hawaiian culture and learn to love and care for their Island home. It’s where they hear Hawaiian stories and imagine our Islands’ voyagers navigating across vast oceans.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Lily Pond
Punahou’s beautiful campus has provided an incredibly rich iconography for the School over the years, but perhaps no feature has been celebrated in metaphor, image and verse as much as the natural freshwater spring for which the School is named.
Referred to by various names – Ka Punahou, The New Spring, the Lily Pond – this unusual hydrological feature has been the historical, geographical and spiritual center of the School since its founding, and also what distinguished the lands of Kapunahou in old Hawai‘i.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Thurston Memorial Chapel
Thurston Memorial Chapel serves as the spiritual heart of Punahou. The 500-seat chapel is used for Chapel Program services, school performances and faculty and staff meetings. The chapel area also includes a “roundhouse” classroom, an open courtyard and chaplains’ offices.
In a normal year, special grade-wide Chapel presentations are held in this Chapel with parents in attendance. Students work with their teachers to prepare scripture readings, songs and other performances for these special events.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Outdoor Education
The Outdoor Education Department has provided unique, age-appropriate, outdoor experiences for Punahou students for more than 50 years. Rooted in important core principles, the program has continued to evolve to meet the physical, emotional and curricular needs of students by connecting them firmly to the land and encouraging exploration.
The K – 8 Outdoor Education Path of Discovery is a carefully designed progression of meaningful experiences that take place in various locations on campus, around O‘ahu and on Hawai‘i Island. Along the way, students learn important skills to navigate each journey.
In addition to signature experiences that span from kindergarten through eighth grade, stewardship of Pu’u o Mānoa (Rocky Hill), the Animal Ambassador Program and Academy student mentorship program are other important branches of the curriculum.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Dole Hall
Dole Hall provides cafeteria, snack bar and dining facilities for all students, faculty and staff. It includes three cafeteria spaces, the intimate “Senior Dining Room” used by grades 1 – 3, the main cafeteria and the faculty dining room. The bookstore – called the Buff ’n Blue Store – is also located in the building.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Waterhouse Pool
With a depth of at least 9 feet for its entire length, the Olympic-sized 50 meter by 25 yard Waterhouse Pool is the largest of any school in the state of Hawaiʻi (including the University of Hawaiʻi), at more than a million gallons.
Students begin swimming in PE in their second semester of third grade. Co-curricular swim classes are also offered in the afternoons and on weekends.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Hemmeter Fieldhouse
Seating 1,800, Hemmeter Fieldhouse is designed for basketball, volleyball, general physical education and student assembly use. The 20,000 square foot gym is configurable for one main competition court, or up to three practice courts.
In a normal year, Junior School students present their in-person May Day program in this gym.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Tennis Courts
These six busy courts anchor a tennis program that serves 2,500 students each year, including Punahou’s ILH teams and co-curricular Tennis School students.
The courts feature covered spectator seating (center courts) and locker rooms, and house the Tennis School office.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Health Center
Located in the Thurston P.E. Center, the campus Health Center is where students can go when they aren't feeling well during the school day. A team of nurses welcomes students and provides immediate care onsite. Depending on a child's symptoms, the Health Center may keep them supervised and cared for at this location until a parent or guardian can pick them up.
For students in kindergarten – grade 5, a nurse will meet them at their classroom if they are ill, and drive them back to the Health Center in a campus golf cart so they are supervised at all times.
The Health Center is a great resource if you have questions about school health forms, doctor wellness visits or medication needs for your student.
To continue your tour, click the ”Next” button to move to the next stop. At each location, we hope you will take a moment to watch a short video from our faculty and staff.
Dillingham Hall
Dillingham Hall is the theater space for Punahou School, housing a 640-seat auditorium with a 32' proscenium orchestra pit, as well as an intimate drama workshop, a scene shop, a costume shop with over 10,000 costumes, and offices for the theater program.
It is used by all grade levels for assemblies, as well as for dance and music programs. Co-curricular programs often use this performance venue for recitals.
Mahalo for taking our virtual tour! Click “back” or on any of the numbered stops on the map to revisit a specific location.