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Dinosaurs

For a short while this year, we began a unit reading and thinking about dinosaurs with ouryoungest children during a weekly snack. To begin, we read a lovely book called DinosaurValley about a small Orodromeus family learning to find food and survive the larger meat eatingdinosaurs.  We followed that with Maia about Jack Horner’s discovery Read More >>

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Freedom Bound Field Trip

The oldest students, who have been studying the Civil War and the Abolitionist movement, were treated to an end of the year field trip led by the amazing Vanessa Johnson. Vanessa Johnson is a gift teacher and storyteller, who brings history to life! The first part of our experience was to view the “object theater” Read More >>

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Chicken Life Cycle

We received fertilized eggs from Farmer Jenn, along with an incubator. We talked about the difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs. We discussed what made egg shells different colors and what makes an eggshell so strong (you can’t break it by squeezing it in your hand) but also fragile at the same time. We broke Read More >>

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Spelling Bee

At a student’s suggestion the New School has decided to start a mini spelling bee. We have students at a variety of ages and levels testing their spelling skills every week. They are using words that come from the school’s sight words as well as the official spelling bee list. The students are going to Read More >>

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Native American Class

The Native Americans class focused on the Iroquois tribe. We focused on the Iroquois tribe because it is right in our back door. The Onondaga nation is just south of Syracuse. We started with an overview of the Iroquois nation. They went over how stories were passed on, the six nations of the Iroquois, and Read More >>

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Human Body Spring Unit

Our Human Body class has turned into an opportunity for the students to discover how much our body systems contribute to everything we do in life. After discussing the Nervous system, we moved on to the respiratory system, where the students were able to construct their own pair of lungs and actually see the connection Read More >>

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Writing Workshop

Children in Kindergarten and First Grade participated in a writing class this spring where they “played” with words and pictures.  They worked on rhyming, fact & opinion and writing descriptive sentences.  Here are some examples of their writing.

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Art Class with Ginger

At least twice a week, the kindergarteners and first graders have free art where they explore various mediums. We generally pull out at least two different mediums they can choose to work with such as acrylic paint, cardboard sculpture, playdough and modeling clay, watercolor paint, collage, chinese brush painting and pastels. We have been working Read More >>

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Plant Class

Over the winter, we have been working in depth with plants. Topics included In class, we grew a bean plant from seed in dirt and a potato plant from a potato using water initially. We have recently planted the potato plant and its roots into a soil bag and will look for potatoes at the Read More >>

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Soap and Bubbles

In March we started a unit called, Soap, Film and Bubbles where students are learning about surface tension, and the chemistry of soap and water. Students have done experiments with bubble clusters, where they made clusters of three and four and found different ways to make shapes. They learned about surface tension and were mainly Read More >>