Social Studies

The Lower School Social Studies program incorporates the learning of facts with projects, reenactments, field trips, and culminating events. As they progress through the grades, students explore increasingly broad historical, social, and geographical contexts.

Students in K-2 learn about themselves, their families and others, their communities, world geography and global communities. In grades 3-4, students learn New York State and United States History. Throughout the curriculum, students learn about maps and the globe, sequencing and chronology, graph and image analysis, and research and writing skills and gain deep appreciation for the broader historical contexts and cultures. Students are encouraged to question the world around them and to use the diverse resources available to them in order to formulate and present ideas.

The curriculum emphasizes an interdisciplinary appreciation for social studies through relevant literature, music, art and drama, and culminates in special projects integrating historical, cultural, artistic, and even culinary aspects of the units as students share their learning with other members of the Lower School community.