Enter a Lower School classroom at Waynflete, and you'll be greeted with a room full of smiling faces. Laughter abounds as students work together—they're having fun, and, at the same time, developing their social, intellectual, and emotional abilities, as well as learning to interact in a community. It's not uncommon to find younger and older students working together as "reading buddies," or cooperatively cleaning the playground.

Our Lower School is organized into four multi-age groups: Early Childhood (3-4 years old); Kindergarten and First Grade; Second and Third Grade; and Fourth and Fifth Grade. At each grade level, students take more and more responsibility for their learning by working closely with teachers to develop written workplans. As students progress, they are encouraged to become increasingly self-directed, and their workplans expand to take on new and more difficult challenges.

Faculty work in teams to design a meaningful and intellectually challenging curriculum that engages students in a wide range of opportunities. Much of the curriculum—including Language Arts, Mathematics, Art, Music, Social Studies, Physical Education, Science, and Spanish—is integrated along central themes, allowing students to explore topics from many different perspectives. Further enriching the Lower School program are field trips and visiting artists, performers, and other community experts.

What the Lower School students and their teachers share is a real love of learning—a love that is nurtured in the students throughout their Lower School experience by both the strong curriculum and the close guidance and advising they receive from their teachers.

The same combination of play and learning is found in the Lower School's Afterschool program.