Service-based Learning
As children mature, they develop an awareness of others that expands into a more global understanding of the community around them. The Lower School program provides age-appropriate service-based learning experiences that move along a child’s development path, from an initial emphasis on family needs to a later emphasis on the needs of a larger community.
The Lower School service-based learning program follows the school’s social studies curriculum, moving with age from the home and school environment to the community, and later to the world. Projects begin in the classroom, where students serve as helpers and note writers for ill classmates. Students then serve the school community as book buddies, lunch helpers and mail carriers. The Lower School Student Council is actively involved in community service through monetary donations and clothing and school supply collections.
Students interact with others in the neighborhood by visiting nursing homes, making cookies with students at the Indiana School for the Blind, and participating in recycling programs. Teachers and parents arrange many of these neighborhood-based projects.
Parental involvement should support the child’s efforts, such as helping the child earn money for community service projects by doing chores at home. The concept of working or providing community service outside of one’s neighborhood or school environment is generally not developmentally appropriate until fourth or fifth grade. At that time, it is best developed as a family value in a closely supervised situation.