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 >>
Highland Forest Camping Trip October 2011
On October 6 the children at The New School set out to enjoy an overnight camping trip at Highland Forest. The weather was spectacular – blue skies, temperatures in the 70’s and yet there was a chill in the air during the night. The wood stoves in the cabins fixed that! On Thursday we hiked Read More >>
Gym
Gym time is an active time. We play lots of different games and split into all different types of groups. On this day, we had multi-age groups. One group played a tag game while the second group enjoyed playing with the parachute. We encourage kids to play safe, fair and hard in every type of Read More >>
Earth Day
Earth Day fell during April Break this year, so a week later we brainstormed ideas on what we could do to help care for the Earth. We came up with lots of ideas and ended up with students collecting trash, sweeping the parking lot, raking leaves, cleaning up flower beds and creating posters. We spent Read More >>
Sledding
Martin, a fifth grader, proposed a day of sledding at school. Teachers took his idea and made it a reality. During investigations the whole school took off to the golf course down the road for an afternoon of fun! When we returned, we had cookies (made at school by the children a few days earlier) Read More >>
Howard Gardner
This fall we wanted to generate a discussion based on Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences. We started off the discussion asking the question, “What do we mean by intelligence?” which led to an animated discussion about how everyone has strengths and weaknesses. We talked about how one goal of The New School is to Read More >>
Rooster Play
In early December the youngest children performed a play based on the Ancient Chinese story of how the rooster lost his horns. Ladies and Gentleman. We are glad you are here to watch our play. The play was a collaborative effort, with each child adding details until we told the story. The children spent weeks Read More >>
Block Centers
Every day kindergartners and first graders enjoy opportunities for creative play. In small groups of three or four, as they play with blocks, cars, geotracks and marble runs, they learn how to collaborate, share ideas, and negotiate with each other. The children have also collaboratively designed a landscape of popcorn kernels, rocks, and twigs, explored seashells and Read More >>
Martin Welych-Flanagan
Humane Society of United States published this article about Martin in their September 13, 2010 issue. Orders for his bracelets continue to pour in!