From the classical poetry of Ovid's Metamorphoses to Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, students explore the relationship of H2O with land and living creatures, incorporating science, service, art and language in a month of water-filled activities. They develop worlds that are pieced together from straits, peninsulas, isthmuses and archipelagoes, and landscapers call for 'more water!' as they build continents in the sand area. They design experiments with water pressure, changing states of matter, and water pollution and purification, heading out to the creek in County Farm Park to test the ph of the water. They track the progress of a droplet of water on its infinitely changing journey and dive into imaginary undersea worlds that take shape in paint and music. The school is full of tiny terrariums and watersheds, model molecules and words like 'hydrophobic' and 'sullage'.
monthly themes
How could a theme be richer than Author Studies? The opportunities are boundless. Our children worked on authors from Ancient Greece to modern America by way of 17th century France and Victorian England. Students compared Aesop (acquiring some Ancient Greek so they could look at his stories in the original language) with the Fables de la Fontaine (read about it here). They read Cynthia Rylant’s books and worked on their own memoirs (here), taking in a fantastic surprise visit by parents to mirror the experience of ‘When the Relatives Came’. Others read Pinkwater books and wrote their own, or collaboratively developed fables and stories in groups. All kinds of delicious tangents led to unexpected learning – read about idioms here. The older children went on a hunt for the Perfect Sentence, which took them through many and marvelous authors’ work (the final winner was a sentence by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), in art they developed illustrations for a book the whole school is making, and there was time as always to just cozy up and read for the joy of it. Whew!
Field trips were the order of the day this month. Students were out analyzing the whys and what fors behind all kinds of buildings. They compared the old and the new wings of the new U of M Art Museum, with a guided tour led by our own Imogen Giles. The 2/3 students worked intensely on ratios and scale drawings, culminating in a project designing a house to meet a real family’s needs, and comparing their designs with the actual house designed for that family by a local architect. (Click here to learn more.) Back at the school, the younger children were building too, a magnificent domed and pillared edifice that would have made the Romans proud. Students studied tetrahedra and worked and reworked bridge designs for maximum strength. This was a month where math and physics met art and creativity in a deeply satisfying way.
Can you say ‘echolocation’? Can you practice echolocation? Our students tried to, in a number of hilarious and enlightening experiments. After honing their skills as bats in diverse ways, real bats came into the school to show them what it really takes to be a small flying mammal (see them here). In the meantime, they pursued speleology in other directions. The little ones experimented with stalactites and stalagmites, and took their experiments to new heights in art. Older children went deep with research individually, and in groups set themselves to building scaled models of the earth’s layers. Classes seized the opportunity to make cave hideaways, complete with cave dwellers and geological formations (and rapturous children enjoying their secret play spaces).
A month of focus on Ben Franklin opened up enormous possibilities to our students. The study of his life, work and ideas led to science, service, history, language, and crucial skills in research, experimentation and presentation. Students explored Franklin’s ‘Thirteen Virtues’ and came up with their own, practicing one each day throughout the month. Experimentation with electricity continued. A collaborative project produced a timeline of Franklin’s life that reflected the diverse interests of the students who conducted the research: Magic Squares, the glass armonica, the Declaration of Independence and swim fins all made it onto the timeline. (Yes, Benjamin Franklin invented swim fins.) Children made special pilgrimages to the local library to honor Franklin as the father of libraries, and math classes introduced ‘Franklin Stations’ with activities inspired by Franklin’s life and inventions. It was a month of wonder and admiration for a truly great man.
Experiments! Experiments! Experiments! From static electricity to circuitry to magnetic fields to electromagnetism, this was a month of trying things out. Students made magnets and compasses, and the school was full of children finding their way around by compass directions. Talk was all about atoms and electrons, renewable and non-renewable energy. (High points were two spectacular labs with the Hands-On Museum, working up close and personal with some really high-powered equipment.) Students studied scientists from different societies from Ancient Greece to the United States, and experimented with their inventions. This led neatly to Benjamin Franklin, who is the subject of our next theme!
This month children took their math to the farmers’ market (and not just for math, but to interview farmers about everything from beneficial insects to the importance of considering distance when you buy food). They visited different farms and experienced firsthand how it feels to feed goats and chickens, pull carrots right out of the ground, pick fresh herbs and rub them through your fingers to release the incredible fragrance and milk a cow. (They also experienced what it’s like to eat amazing ice cream made from milk from that same cow.) The older children took the theme of farming to the study of Shakespeare, and learned about the Pastoral tradition while rehearsing and memorizing ‘As You Like It’. (They performed the play in December at Kerrytown Concert House.) Littler children read Charlotte’s Web and teamed up with their older buddies to make butter. It was a deliciously food-centered month!
Children worked on mathematically-structured Islamic geometric tile designs; learned to play and dance to music from Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Egypt; and learned some Arabic and used it to work on calligraphy. They translated French poetry from Senegal; studied the art of henna; and made an enormous camel out of recycled materials. They studied the history and mythology of Carthage (one source was the Dido and Aeneas story from Virgil's Aeneid, translating phrases from the Latin), and made artistic representations of historical scenes (such as Hannibal crossing the Alps). Older children studied the political history of North Africa and represented different eras through a diagrammed city they created which showed growth and change over the centuries. They studied agriculture and researched North African cuisine, leading to developing a menu for a banquet. This culminated in a school-wide trip to Tantre Farm where the children harvested vegetables and cooked them under the guidance of Chef Alex Young (Zingerman's Roadhouse) to produce an amazing North African feast.