Twice a year the students at The New School camp out overnight at Highland Forest. It is a magical two days at Pines Camp. On Thursday night parents join us for a potluck dinner and songs around the campfire. On our Thursday hike, after reading a book about birds nests, we challenged children to create Read More >>
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!
Bubbles
Everyone has played with bubbles at some point in their life. However, many people may not think about what a bubble really is. What makes a bubble a bubble? Six of the students in grades 4-7 investigated the science behind soap bubbles through hands on experimenting. While we were doing our experimenting on bubbles and Read More >>
How Many Seeds are in a Pumpkin?
K +1st grade students explored how many seeds are inside a pumpkin. We started out by reading part of the book How Many Seeds are in a Pumpkin by Margaret McNamara. After we read about how the class in the book got messy and goopy emptying out pumpkins, we estimated how many seeds we thought were in 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 >>
Wiggly Worms!
All of the students at school this fall have participated in science classes where they are learning about earthworms. We have read worm books, discussed and observed worm body parts, tested whether worms are sensitive to light and dark, and whether they prefer moist or dry environments. The younger children are creating a diorama of the worm’s 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 >>
Chicken Science
The Kindergarten and First Grade science class has recently been learning about chickens. Students have explored the life cycle of the chicken, looked at and ordered the 21 days it takes to hatch a chicken egg, and named the parts of a chicken egg. We’ve also read great books on chickens and had discussions on Read More >>
Nature in the Neighborhood with Brett
On Friday afternoons all the children had a chance to make a microscopic slide, put it on the stage, focus the microscope and change the magnification of the microscope. They were then asked to draw the images they saw. Older children used stains (iodine and onion cells) to make their slides more visible. Our goal Read More >>
The Periodic Table
The older students spent four weeks studying The Periodic Table and creating a Wanted Poster for an element of their choice. We introduced the project by listening to Tom Lehrer singing “Elements,” his well known song where he rattles off all the elements of the Periodic Table. Students had to research their element and creatively Read More >>