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Welcome to the Lower School
Powered by Students’ Questions and Perspectives
In the constant focus on “what comes next” in life, it’s easy to forget how brief and precious childhood is. King School sets a better standard by creating an environment that elevates wonder, creativity, and joy.
Our youngest students’ curiosity is maximized because we honor their questions and consider their perspectives as we build strong educational foundations. Students get more from their education because they feel inspired and delighted every day. As a result they develop the confidence and accountability to discover and explore.
A Better Standard for Lower School
When young children are encouraged to ask questions and make their own discoveries, they become good listeners and critical thinkers who gain the confidence to take on challenges and seize unlimited possibilities. As one of Stamford’s top-rate private elementary schools, King School’s program is an interactive, hands-on experience that nurtures a love of learning and working with others.
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Early Childhood
PreKindergarten and Kindergarten
King's young learners, starting at age 3, experience education as a path of discovery, understanding, wonder, and joy. These ideas are grounded in our Reggio-Emilia inspired, project-based teaching and learning program.
Elementary School
Grades 1-5
King's young children are encouraged to ask questions and make their own discoveries. King School’s Grade 1–5 program is an interactive, hands-on experience that nurtures a love of learning and working with others.
Lower School Global Studies Program
The Global Studies program was an eight-day adventure across Central and South America. The three phases of the program allowed students to conduct research on a select country and choose where they wanted to dive deeply into their learning. In the final phase, students built conceptual understanding through art, media, 3D models, and writing.
Learn more about Lower School: PreK-Grade 5
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“We created the Grade 4 probability carnival for the younger students. Even though they were having fun, we were actually teaching them math!”
— Gracie H., Lower School student
“King encourages me to follow my passions. I like STEM activities. We get to make our own objects that solve the problem that needs to be solved.”
— Varun B., Lower School student
“In Science, we were real inventors, creating our own inventions to help us solve a problem. In Math, we learned about economics by creating a marketplace and selling a product to our classmates.”
— Tim D., Lower School student
Meet our Community
Lower School in Action
Students in Grades 3, 4 and 5 are joyfully immersed in reading and writing, building the foundational skills needed to evolve as able researchers who can assess diverse information and shape and share their own meaningful perspectives. Grade 4 students learn about nonfiction structure, including how to use headings and subtitles to provide clues on where information can be found while conducting research. Grade 4 student Penny Prince explains that this is useful, saying, "I have the ability to find a subtopic faster than normal. My brain was familiar with finding information quicker and not having to read through everything on the website I was looking at."
The new Balance Blocks program and the Physical Education program support the development and growth of healthy minds and bodies for King Lower School students. Aligned with the Wellness and Academic Excellence pillars of the King School Strategic Plan 2020-2025, these initiatives teach our PreKindergarten-Grade 5 students skills and strategies that foster mindfulness, social and emotional growth, executive functioning, as well as physical strength and stability that undergird learning. Zeba Hart-Syed, Grade 5 student, describes Physical Education as, "it helps me get out my energy. The teachers are fun and the different games are interesting so you can really focus on playing and working hard."
Nick DeFelice, Acting Chair of the Science Department, is enthusiastically collaborating with Science faculty across the school to build upon the student experience. The objective, as Mr. DeFelice describes it, is to "teach students to think and work like scientists, as they engage in expanded opportunities for hands on work that is designed to allow students to ask questions, form hypotheses, design experiments, analyze data, form conclusions, and communicate findings as a way to learn the content and to demonstrate their understanding." King teachers are coaches, guiding students in their investigations and journey in learning about certain topics of the natural world.
Grade 1 students met with experts to examine and ask questions about how the City of Stamford works.
Listen to PA King Inclusion and Diversity speaker Dena Simmons on Tuesday October 6, 7:00-8:30 p.m. p.m. to hear her presentation on "From Surviving to Thriving: Creating Equitable Environments Through Emotional Intelligence and Culturally Relevant Practices."
Children are innately curious about the world around them. King's Lower School science program amplifies this sense of wonder, teaching young scientists the steps in research: beginning with developing an evidence-based claim and progressing to learning to reason philosophically about natural phenomena.
Over the last few months, King worked hard to make sure campus would be safe for students and staffulty to return. We're so happy to have our community together on campus again. Watch a video and see photos from the first day.
Congratulations to the Class of 2020! Thanks to the guidance and support of their teachers, college counselors, and families, the successes they created for themselves at King helped them earn acceptances to some of the best schools in the country.
Grade 3 students have just completed their four-week Fairytale Adaptation Writing Unit. Mrs. Bruno and Mrs. Keogh, Grade 3 Faculty, modeled how to plan out a fairytale adaptation by first identifying the elements in the classic version and writing them in a graphic organizer, which they created.