A few years ago, I was gifted the book The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs . It’s a truly beautiful book, and for that reason it ended up living on my coffee table, where I could admire it often. Believe me, I had every intention of picking it up and getting lost in the stories and illustrations, but somehow I never did… until recently. Over winter break, when life slowed down just enough, I finally opened it. I’m so glad I did. It reminded me of a connection that is alway

Lunar New Year is coming up on February 17th and we will celebrate this spring festival with traditional lucky foods next week.  While the Lunar New Year is celebrated around the world, we focused our learning on ancient China.  This brought our attention to social hierarchies.  As might be expected in ancient China, the emperor and royal family were the top of the heap, with wealth and power.  However, just below these dynasties were the civil servants, respected because the

January did not go exactly as planned (and somehow, it may have been even better because of that). Between snow days, MLK day, and conferences, we missed nearly two full weeks of school… and yet the children accomplished a stunning amount of work. Their resilience, focus, and exuberance reminded me that learning doesn’t stop when the calendar shifts, it just adapts. One of the highlights of the month was the birth of our own spontaneously-created Lower Elementary Writers’ Wor