Free Union
Country School

Third, fourth, and fifth grade art and science students have been working on something that combines visual art, environmental science, and social justice. Our art teacher Courtney explains: We talked about what makes for a visual argument that invites you in. We also discussed water and water conservation. A nationwide project that was titled, “Imagine a Day Without Water" was reframed to "Imagine a Day WITH Water" that now includes the aspirations of the many with no water because it has run dry by drought, been turned off because of poverty, or contaminated by toxins. New ways to look at art, water, and people.

It is only appropriate that the breeze was blowing leaves through our gorgeous outdoor classroom at Free Union Country School while we were hard at work designing our FantaSeeds: seeds with fantastic dispersal mechanisms!

One of our school families had their Diwali celebration at school one weekend, and they kindly left their beautiful rangolis, flowers, and candles for us all to enjoy as we arrived back at school on Monday. Diwali, India's most important holiday of the year, inspired some of our elementary students to make their own rangoli designs from chalk and sand!

How about some oldie-but-goodie naturalist games to heighten the senses?

In early autumn, we play host to the Monarch Butterflies that lay their eggs on the undersides of milkweed leaves outside our classroom. Voraciously the caterpillars chew and chomp and grow stage by stage until they metamorphose into the beautiful butterfly above. It's also a time for poetry journals and buddies and a time when our more reserved students find their voices.

Today, we awakened our observational skills, practiced using magnifying glasses and jewelers loops, studied skulls and tracks, and did some basic chemistry experimentation.

Collaboration is an important skill to learn in childhood. Recently, one of our budding artists drew dragons on the blacktop during snack recess. Many classmates admired her skills, so she offered to help create dragons for everyone. The kids took turns, listened to each other, shared techniques, and turned the blacktop into a beautiful dragon mural. Big thanks to first and second grade for collaborating to turn our blacktop into a dragon celebration!

When your kid hops in the car after school and wishes you a very happy Poem in Your Pocket Day and hands you this little scroll of sweetness & sanity and you feel your whole body relax, that’s when you realize that a "place" can be a hero. My kids’ school is one of my heroes - consistently bringing happiness, peace, love, & community in the smallest, humble ways that matter immensely. (Repost courtesy of @twiggsphoto)

This spring in tangents class, students explore some of the properties of water. They've used a kiddie pool to test the hydrodynamics of various boat designs. It’s an exciting example of learning-by-doing as students build boats powered by rubber bands and wind, and wade into elementary physics and mechanical engineering.

The Free Book Bus, encouraging kids to have home llbraries and book collections, is a perfect entree to third graders' study of what it takes to make a difference in their communities. Students interview local "change makers," consider how their areas of service overlap their own interests and passions, brainstorm ways of raising start-up capital, and begin to devise tangible ways of helping and putting their ideas into the world.

The purpose of any club (rocketry, chess, ecology) is to bring students together to learn about something that matters to them. The Free Union Book Club gives kids the chance to discover what types of books interest them most. Often, children are slow to make reading an integral part of their lives because they simply are not aware of what is available to them. When they discover a genre that excites them, they welcome spending time in those new literary worlds.

A plant sale is a way for students to understand up close the growth cycle of living things and the math behind a business: cost to grow, price to sell, and profit to use responsibly. Students also learn about customer service and begin to understand entrepreneurship.