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Biography Book Club

Students in this book club read a biography of their choosing over the summer.  When they returned to school this fall, they had to answer questions about their biography and create a poster advertising a speaking engagement by the subject of their biography.  Students then had to write a paragraph summarizing the book and create Read More >>

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Highland Forest in October

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 >>

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Salt Museum Field Trip 2012

The whole school visited The Salt Museum which is located in Onondaga Lake Park. This is without doubt one of the best local field trips for elementary school children. Ghost Maggie brought the history of the Salt Industry in Syracuse to life with her humor and knowledge. Ghost Maggie introduced the many ghosts (played by Read More >>

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Children making and giving gifts

Every year children randomly are assigned another student to make a gift for. When they present their gifts they share an appreciation which explains why they made the gift. In the picture above a child is being presented with a handmade joke book. Other gifts included a board game about whales, a model of a Read More >>

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Shakespeare visits

Shakespeare visited the school to share his life story, to answer questions and to listen to the older students recite their monologues from Macbeth, Midsummers Night’s Dream, The Tempest  and Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare also listened to a song students wrote and admired the replica of The Globe which they designed and built. ShakespeareWritten by Read More >>

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Rock Art

Rock Art Students transformed rocks into animals using acrylics

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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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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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Valentine’s Day

Nothing like Valentines to challenge us to transform a shopping bag into a favorite animal.

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Joe Murphy, Fine Artist and Illustrator visits

It’s been a while since Joe Murphy graduated from SU, but he got some quick attention passing a sheet of his  X-Men trading cards around the circle of students, and a drop-jaw reaction to his own fanciful painting of a dog in a wizard’s hat.  As a kid, Joe was intrigued by his realization that Read More >>