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Local History

Each  child at The New School was given a replica of an old postcard of a Syracuse scene. Postcards showed parks, downtown scenes, and places of interest such as Oakwood Cemetery. Using VTS (Visual Thinking Strategies) children were asked to look at the picture and describe what was happening, and what made them say that? Read More >>

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Bruce Coville Showers Sparks of Inspiration at The New School

Students at The New School have been exploring Shakespeare, reading Bruce Coville’s adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, and of Hamlet, two of seven plays he has reworked for young readers.  The Syracuse author of a variety of enticing books for children brought his boundless enthusiasm and talents to the school this week, describing the history Read More >>

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Clay

Students get a chance to flex their creative sculpture muscles as they create with clay.  Each student gets a chunk of clay to mold as they see fit while using their hands and various clay tools.  Since we won’t be keeping each masterpiece, we take a photo of the figure with it’s creator as a Read More >>

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Measurement

Inch by inch we built our own measuring tapes and used them to measure our thumbs, ears, wrists, and waists.  We were excited to find how much easier it is to use a measuring tape to measure around things than it is to use a ruler!

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New and Good

New and Good is a tradition at The New School.  It was started in the 1970’s by Bob Newman, when he was the director of the Syracuse Institute for Enabling Education (the precursor) to The New School.  It has worked effectively during all these years to merge affective education, pre-reading and early reading  education.  New Read More >>

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St. Patrick’s Day Fun

Our leprechaun trap tradition was started many years ago by Dottie Mueller. Ever since the children spend two weeks creating inventive traps (the leprechauns say ingenious!) in the hope that those pesky leprechauns will come visit our school.  So far we haven’t succeeded, but the leprechauns come, create mayhem, get stuck and unstuck in their Read More >>

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Beaver Hike

Enjoying the drizzling rain our younger students had a wonderful time on our beaver walk. We were very lucky to have John Stella and Beth Moughty (Marina’s parents) as tour guides. John challenged us to search for signs of beaver and signs of spring. We counted four beaver dams in the feeder canal and a Read More >>

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Electronics

It worked! These boys were thrilled when the circuit they built in electronics class lit up the LED (light emitting diode).  The hours of learning to identify, sort electrical components, and read circuit diagrams were successful! 

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Snowflake Bentley

The passion of one man to share the beauty of snow crystals and dew drops with the world has inspired our students to share their own snowflakes through Legacies. After reading Snowflake Bentley by Jaqueline Briggs Martin and looking at the marvelous photographs published in his book Snow Crystals, three of our students shared and taught classmates how Read More >>

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Syracuse Local History

Time Travel at The New School To introduce our Local History unit all the children at The New School were sent home a different historical postcard of a Syracuse scene. The postcards were dated from the 1920’s to 1930’s. Using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), students were asked to look at the postcard and list as Read More >>