Lower School at Wheeler
Learning—and learning how to learn—begins in our Lower School. With The Nest Preschool for 2.9 – 5-year-olds, Early Childhood Kindergarten, and an Elementary Education Division for Grades 1-5, Wheeler’s Lower School sparks the joy of learning. With our expert faculty, your child will build reading, math, language, and more skills in a safe, trusting, and fun campus environment. (Please note, Kindergarten applicants must be five (5) years old by August 31.)
Our Goal
Wheeler’s Lower School’s goal is to support your child in developing the academic skills, personal awareness, and emotional resilience necessary to be a successful learner and valued member of the community.
Our Program
Wheeler Lower School offers a creative, joyful learning experience built on an enriched daily program responsive to your child. Our signature Aerie Approach enables every student to discover, explore, and develop personal interests and academic passions that go beyond the curriculum. The experienced teachers in our Lower School are extraordinary, enthusiastic, creative, and deeply invested in your child’s success. As a community, students learn to adapt to and work with the full range of emotions, develop greater self-awareness, and, through reflection, discover and embrace their own evolving identities. Students also learn to cultivate healthy relationships through compassion, inclusion, and valuing multiple perspectives.
Our Community
A defining aspect of Wheeler’s Lower School is its strong sense of community. At weekly Community Meetings, grade levels may perform or exhibit their work as well as listen and learn from each other. In addition, Lower School has a buddy system between older and younger grades to build these community connections. Special events bring all students from Kindergarten-Grade 12 together. Two memorable bookend moments take place each year. At the Opening School Assembly, our Senior Class walks hand in hand with Early Childhood students to the seats of honor. These students create the backdrop while the Head of School presents a Welcome Back to School address. At Field Day each spring, the March of Purples and Golds leads off as Seniors again link hands with our youngest students to walk onto the field at the Wheeler Farm. Field Day is the oldest continuous Wheeler tradition, and our students love it.
Contact the Head of Lower School Kate Hewitt
Lower School Administration
See Our Stories
Preparations for the new school year are already underway at Wheeler 🚌💫! Various groups of students are back on our Providence and Seekonk campuses for preseason fall sports practices, orientation experiences, and more.
Recently, Wheeler’s Office of Equity, Community, and Belonging welcomed incoming 9th-grade students of color for an orientation. Students connected through team activities, explored both campuses, met their peer supporters, and heard advice from older Wheeler students.
We’ll have more orientation coverage next Monday as we welcome all of our new and returning students back to campus. We can’t wait to see everyone💜💛!
Aug 25
Orientation Day is less than a week away 💜💛! We’re so excited to welcome new and returning students to both of our campuses on Monday, Aug. 31. Here’s what to expect! This information is also available on the Parent Portal.
Aug 25
Wheeler’s faculty and staff are back on our Providence and Seekonk campuses this week as we prepare for the upcoming school year! The morning began with (re)connections and conversations over a warm and delicious breakfast, thanks to our dining services team, @CulinArtatWheeler.
Then, faculty and staff gathered in Isenberg Auditorium for a special welcoming session with Head of School Mark Anderson P’27 and Board of Trustees Chair Matt Coen ’88.
In his remarks, Mr. Coen reflected on the lasting impact one of his own teachers, History Teacher Nancy Sizer, had on him. “There will be students sitting in your classrooms this year who will still be talking about you 40 years from now,” he shared with today’s faculty. “I know that because I am one of those students [when it comes to Mrs. Sizer]. I really want to start by saying thank you.”
We’re thankful, too, for the faculty and staff who make Wheeler such a special community, and we can’t wait to see the impact they’ll make throughout the year ahead. 💜💛Stay tuned for more Opening Week updates!
Aug 24
Austin N.B. ’27 and Upper School French Teacher Kevan Morshed P’37 were selected for this year’s Albert H. Small Normandy Institute, a George Washington University program that invites 15 high school student and teacher pairs from across the U.S. to learn about the D-Day Campaign of 1944.
During a semester-long online course with GW faculty, the student and faculty teams conduct research on a fallen soldier from their home state. Austin and Mr. Morshed chose Private Eugene Beauchene, Jr. from Olneyville, RI, who was killed in battle on Friday, June 23, 1944 and buried at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-Sur-Mer, France.
Austin and Mr. Morshed worked with archival documents to learn about the life of Pvt. Beauchene, and they were even able to contact his 88-year-old daughter, Nancy Beauchene Heidman, who now lives in Wisconsin. “She helped us tremendously with our work,” Mr. Morshed says.
With that information in hand, Mr. Morshed and Austin are writing Pvt. Beauchene’s biography, which will be given to the American Battle Monuments Commission.
As part of the travel component of the program, this summer they went to Washington, D.C., where they visited historical and cultural sites, attended lectures from different scholars, and spent a day in the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Maryland where they examined documents from Pvt. Beauchene’s 4th Infantry Division in WWII.
Following their stay in DC, they went on to France and spent a week exploring the Normandy region and many of the sites related to the Normandy Invasion. They walked on Omaha and Utah Beaches, explored German Atlantic Wall fortifications, and saw other battle sites and cemeteries.
Perhaps most significantly, Austin presented a paper on the Battle of Saint-Lô and gave a remembrance for Pvt. Beauchene in front of his gravesite in the Normandy American Cemetery. In addition to talking about his life and military service, Austin read a letter that Pvt. Beauchene wrote to Nancy, who was five at the time. He composed it only a few days before he died.
“It was an honor for us,” Mr. Morshed says. “The experience was moving and it changed the way we think about history.”
Aug 21
