For a short while this year, we began a unit reading and thinking about dinosaurs with ouryoungest children during a weekly snack. To begin, we read a lovely book called DinosaurValley about a small Orodromeus family learning to find food and survive the larger meat eatingdinosaurs. We followed that with Maia about Jack Horner’s discovery Read More >>
Freedom Bound Field Trip
The oldest students, who have been studying the Civil War and the Abolitionist movement, were treated to an end of the year field trip led by the amazing Vanessa Johnson. Vanessa Johnson is a gift teacher and storyteller, who brings history to life! The first part of our experience was to view the “object theater” Read More >>
Chicken Life Cycle
We received fertilized eggs from Farmer Jenn, along with an incubator. We talked about the difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs. We discussed what made egg shells different colors and what makes an eggshell so strong (you can’t break it by squeezing it in your hand) but also fragile at the same time. We broke Read More >>
Native American Class
The Native Americans class focused on the Iroquois tribe. We focused on the Iroquois tribe because it is right in our back door. The Onondaga nation is just south of Syracuse. We started with an overview of the Iroquois nation. They went over how stories were passed on, the six nations of the Iroquois, and Read More >>
Book Club: Henry and Mudge/Mr. Putter and Tabby
In January we started reading Henry and Mudge and the Snowman plan, looking at the story elements of this story. Before they started reading we had a class about what story elements are and students had a good understanding of characters, setting and events in stories. They learned when figuring out the characters you ask Read More >>
Poetry
Inspired by the teaching of Kenneth Koch, and his brilliant books “Rose, Where did you get that Red” and “Wishes, Lies and Dreams,” our oldest students explored their poetic talents, some for the very first time. Each class began with a mini-lesson, which included reading and discussing poems written by other children on the topic. Read More >>
Alphabet Books
Doug Dubois, father of Cyrus, introduced us to the fascinating work of MacArthur Fellow, Wendy Ewald who began fostering literacy via photography and storytelling with children in the 1970s. Together we decided to create an alphabet book, randomly assigning each child a letter of the alphabet. Doug and Leah came to our school multiple times Read More >>
Industrial Revolution Essay
As a culminating activity for our year long study of the Industrial Revolution, all the students were asked to develop an essay evaluating its positive and negative effects. Many historical documents, photos, journal entries, cartoons, were studied and discussed. The class sorted these documents into positive and negative piles, and of course some didn’t belong Read More >>
Industrial Revolution
To start this unit, students were asked to analyze a Lewis Hine photograph of children working in factories using the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). This led to a discussion of child labor. Each student was assigned to read and present an historical fiction novel about child labor at the turn of the century. In their Read More >>
Lewis and Clark
From September to the end of October the Second and Third graders learned about the explorers who traveled across the United States to find a waterway to the Pacific Ocean. One of the first things that students learned was that it was that a large part of the U.S. was bought in the Louisiana Purchase. Read More >>