We began our layers of the Earth class by asking ourselves, “How many layers of the Earth are there?”. That is when everyone learned that there are four layers of, and that it is impossible to dig all the way down to the center of the Earth. We did many hands-on experiments with this class. Read More >>
Systemic Racism
Our children, our students, live in a world that has developed all kinds of media and ways to transmit information, disinformation, ideas, and images. They hear the media, adults, other peers talking about events and opinions as they move through their days. Some of these ideas are exciting and innovative, others are darker and disturbing. Read More >>
Chickens
The New School started housing fertilized chicken eggs on March 7th, and are watching them grown in an incubator day by day. We looked at this as a great opportunity to teach our students all about chickens. Students in Kindergarten through Second Grade have been taking a Chickens class with our student teacher, Erica, where Read More >>
Westcott Cultural Fair
The Westcott Cultural Fair is always a festive way to begin our school year. This year, during Investigations, the children, expressing their love for books, created signs to carry . The titles of books they chose was wonderfully varied: Kensuke’s Kingdom, Private Peaceful, Cat Warriors, Blues Clues, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Diary of a Wimpy Read More >>
Electricity!
The second graders have started to explore electricity this spring in their science class. As a start to this unit, we have been exploring static electricity using plastic wrap and paper towels. We’ve discussed, explored and read about positive and negative charges atracting and the students have had a blast! What we enjoyed watching the Read More >>
Worms
Students in grade 2 spent 6 weeks observing worms and their behavior. First we predicted whether worms prefer light or dark, prefer moist or dry areas, and how they react to touch and then we set up experiments each week and watched them. We witnessed within minutes that worms like dark and moist surroundings. Together Read More >>
Water Cycle
Over the last five weeks second graders were part of a science unit learning about the water cycle. Students have been learning about three parts of the water cycle: evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. Students learned a song to help them remember which way the water moves in each phase of the water cycle. During this Read More >>