Band and Orchestra

Fourth and Fifth graders who are interested in playing an instrument are encouraged to join band (woodwind, brass, percussion) or orchestra (strings) starting in the fall of each year.

Destination Imagination

Led by Kipling teachers, Destination Imagination centers around teamwork, creativity, and problem solving. DI is open to 4th and 5th graders. DI begins in October and runs through February, meeting once a week on Mondays before school. DI is team based, so teams also meet on their own to complete the team project.

The Paw Post is a newspaper written and published by our fourth and fifth grade Newspaper Action Team.

Students in 4th and 5th grade “compete” to test their knowledge in national and world geography.

The Deerfield Speech Tournament provides early opportunities for students to develop oral communications skills. Students in grades 3, 4, and 5 have an opportunity to perform a published piece or give a speech written by the student. The students are critiqued on their expression, memory, and interpretation.

The Young Authors’ Conference, held each year in May at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois, is an event sponsored by the Illinois Language and Literacy Council, in conjunction with the Illinois Reading Council. Designed as a celebration to honor exceptional writing by students in grades K through 8, the conference provides an opportunity for these young writers to meet published authors and to hear how the authors themselves create the characters and stories that have become their books.