Curriculum: Science at the School for Children

Science in the Lower School

Lower School teachers encourage children to develop an attitude of inquiry and respect for their natural and physical environment. Science is integrated and is integral to the daily life of the classroom. Children investigate, manipulate, discuss, record, and predict based on their observations on trips or their work in the classroom. They explore how living and nonliving organisms change over time, cause and effect relationships, and relationships between form and function.

Teachers use many strategies to support these explorations. In their study of living things, children grow plants from seed and keep simple records of their growth over time. They make trips to parks where they collect natural materials and gather data about seasonal changes. The 5/6s visit farms and farmers markets to learn about plants at different stages of the growth cycle and to learn about the seasonal harvesting of food. Animals such as fish, snails, and mealworms are studied in aquariums and terrariums. Children study human diversity by discussing and recording similarities and differences, as well as changes, in their own and classmates' bodies, such as skin, hair, size, eyes, teeth, gender, and age. The curriculum includes developmentally appropriate learning about human development from family events that include birth, growth, illness, and death.

The area around the school and neighborhood is the source of many investigations about the environment we live in. Lower School children explore and discover the similarities and differences between a city environment of sidewalks, streets, and buildings and the more natural world of Riverside Park, a short walk from the school. During their many trips to stores and other service areas in the neighborhood, children observe the different kinds of workers, machinery, and vehicles that provide for our needs.

In their classrooms, children have daily opportunities to discover the physical properties of the various materials they work with, such as sand, soil, water, blocks, paint, collage, clay, and wood. They use all their senses in their work with these open-ended sensorial materials, and learn how their efforts produce change and possibly a final product. In their dramatic play in the block area, they discover how changes in form and structure can affect the function of the play in their buildings. Chemical changes are experienced through the abundance of cooking in the classrooms. Children investigate and learn how to use simple tools, machines, batteries, bulbs, and magnets.

Lower School classes participate in the annual Science Expo with exhibits featuring their work in math and science.