We foster each child's personal growth.
Our Lower School Learning Focus
Lower School focuses on establishing solid academic skills and fostering each child’s personal growth. A strong emphasis on reading, language arts, mathematics, and writing is enhanced by incorporating science and technology, social studies, fine and performing arts, continued study of the Spanish language, and participation in physical education.
Lower School Philosophy
It is in these early grades that exploration of the world sparks the students’ love of learning and active participation in their own education. As they progress through Lower School, students begin to take responsibility for their own learning, actions, and belongings. A partnership of parent, student, and teacher allows children the opportunity to take risks and to challenge themselves in a supportive and safe environment.
Language Arts, Mathematics and Social Studies
Columbia University’s Readers’ Workshop is the foundation of language arts in the lower school, used to teach children the skills needed to decode, comprehend, and appreciate various texts, both fiction and non-fiction. A wide variety of authors, including Jack Gantos, Matt de la Peña, and Oge Mora have visited our campus to speak to the Lower School students. Mathematics begins with a concrete model and advances toward pictorial and abstract representations, such as standard algorithms. Social studies teaches appreciation for different cultures, focuses on current events, geography, map skills, and our local community. Students visit Harbour’s Edge senior living center in Delray Beach to read books, sing songs, recite poems, and read letters to the residents and each spring, during the traditional Children Around the World unit, students present their knowledge on diverse cultures to the assembled Lower School.
Science and Spanish
Science takes a hands-on, inquiry-based, in order to stimulate the children’s innate inquisitiveness about the natural world. To complement class work, students use our school environment which includes our field, playground, and butterfly garden, but the highlight is a trip to the Kennedy Space Center where students do science experiments, learn the history of our space program, and have lunch with an astronaut. The Spanish language program stresses development of vocabulary and accent, as well as knowledge and appreciation of Spanish cultures.