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The Rose Class enjoyed Valentine's Day. Birdseed hearts were made as family gifts. A tea party including delicious tarts made by Stephanie Romano was a 'sought after' treat. Yummy! Our Valentine story was La Cucarachita. Little brown ant bought herself a red hair ribbon after finding a small coin. She washed and dressed herself nicely to watch the world go by. Everyone who saw her fell in love with her and asked for marriage. She asked how they would show their love to her, and each animal  -- bull, rooster, dog, cat, pig -- made its animal sound. Oh, how she covered her ears and asked them to move on. Mouse, too, asked for marriage and showed her he would gently stroke her face and look into her eyes. Cucarachita agreed to marry mouse, and if they haven't moved, they live happily together still! Circle time has a theme about the gnomes working under the hill cleaning the roots, polishing the stones, and feeding all a big pot of broth. The North Wind Doth Blow is our most popular song for this past January and February.   

In the Sunflower Class, the children who are preparing to go to First Grade are very busy working on their boats and dolls. In the first days of March we will have our monthly field trip to Warrup's Farm. The children will have the opportunity to observe how Farmer Bill makes maple syrup. During circle time we all help Farmer Bill to roll the logs to a site, saw them into pieces just right, and bring them to the maple sugaring house. Then we drill the holes and hang the buckets to collect the sweet sap. When the sap is ready, we put it in a big kettle, boil it, and make maple syrup.  

Having just completed a Letters block, First Grade is now entering a Numbers block and we will be working with the four math processes. We are so excited to continue exploring the world of numbers!  

Second Grade just finished a Language Arts block. We learned the parts of speech and several saint stories. This block we are practicing our play, "The Lost Children," and practicing our multiplication. We are also fervently working on our auction projects! 

Third Grade has been in a Shelters main lesson block. After remembering Adam and Eve and their cave home, we learned about the various types of natural indigenous homes built in the jungle and in the Andes. We then continued around the world, learning about shelters built using dirt (cob, sod, hogans, earth-berm, adobe); trees, saplings, and reeds  (tree houses, wigwams, Long Houses, log cabins); water (igloos and houseboats); and materials from animals (Tipis and Yurts). We learned about the geography of each area and why a type of home might be built there. Finally we learned about the steps of modern housebuilding, followed by an excursion back into Nepal to learn about a new combination of traditional building (cob) coupled with recycling wine bottles from Katmandu's embassies to build inexpensive "green" houses! Our last week included oral presentations by the children describing the shelter projects they built themselves.

To complement their Shelters block the Third Grade created self-portraits in beeswax (our bodies being our first home).

Fourth Grade

The Fourth Grade is in their second Human & Animal block.  We are looking at the nature of tamed and domesticated creatures in comparison to wild animals. This offers us many debates on the benefits of captivity versus freedom, as well as the complexities of human power and responsibility towards our animal brothers and sisters.

The Sixth Grade has completed their Physics main lesson block with the Sixth and Seventh Grades' Science Fair. We demonstrated color and light phenomena, such as rainbows and color from chromotropes, and answered the questions, "Why is the sky blue?" and "Why is the sunset red?" Do you know what color you will see if you stare at green for a long period of time and then look away? (Hint: It will not be green!) We also showed how heat can crack marbles, can come from sawing wood, and can reveal the conductivity of metals. Magnets are always fun and we had two demonstrations in this category of Physics. In Acoustics, we demonstrated the Doppler Principle and how sound travels underwater. We are glad that we have two more Physics blocks in Seventh and Eighth grades! Thank you all for attending our Science Fair.
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