Hi, everyone!
Can you believe we're already over halfway through November? The past few weeks at school have been filled with exciting and unique activities. Here are a few of the wonderful things we've been up to!
We wrapped up our final Farmers Market of the fall a few weeks ago! We had an amazing turnout at every market, thanks to the hard work and dedication of all our volunteers! The Farmers Market is such a special event for our students and such a great way to foster authentic learning!
While working at the farmers market, students have the opportunity to:
- Share with the community about what they have produced.
- Offer community education: improving soil health through vermiculture, sharing information about how to create healing skin balms, the importance of pollinator plants.
- Practice math through money exchange.
- Work on grace and courtesy through talking with customers.
Farm day has been in full swing the last couple of weeks! Students have been busy preparing us for the winter months.
This week students:
Assembled pizza recycling boxes for Christmas in Davidson.
Hammered stakes to hold our frost cover to protect our luffa sponges until they are ready to harvest.
Planted kale, collards, and lettuce to grow in our aquaponics system.
Upper Elementary has been busy learning about energy and the many forms it comes in to prepare for a guest speaker who is passionately involved in public service and clean energy.
To begin, students defined energy and took a moment to reflect on how it impacts our daily lives. After some thought, we came to the conclusion that energy is connected to nearly everything we do! To learn more, students split into groups to research different forms of energy and created flyers to share their findings with the class.
The topics they researched included fossil fuels (coal and oil), hydropower, solar power, wind power, and biomass.
In their research, students focused on the following key questions:
Is the energy source renewable or nonrenewable?
How is this energy collected?
What is its economic impact?
What is its environmental impact?
What are three interesting facts about this energy source?
In their opinion, is it sustainable or not?
Middle School has been hard at work studying the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs), but I rarely get pictures of them because, well, you know middle school!
So far this year, they have covered SDG #16 - Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, and SDG #12 Responsible Consumption and Production. In the coming months we will begin to look at SDG #7 Affordable and Clean Energy, and SDG#11 Sustainable Cities and Communities.
For our November field trip, we decided to create an interdisciplinary experience. Thanks to Ms. Patricia and some awesome parent volunteers, we loaded up the students and took them to Catawba College. I've mentioned before how Catawba holds such a special place in my heart, so it was really rewarding to take them to a place that I love so much. But of course, we didn't take the trip just for me to share my love for the school.
Catawba College is one of the leading environmental small colleges in the Southeast and home to the Center for the Environment. What's really neat about this building is that all aspects of the facility were designed with sustainability in mind.
Some features the students learned about include:
The building uses geothermal technology to heat and cool itself.
The window side of the building faces the ecological preserve for a reason!
During the summer months, the leaves on the trees help block the sun, keeping the building cool.
In the winter months, when the leaves are no longer present, the sun helps warm the building.
The building was constructed using environmentally friendly materials.
Rainwater and runoff are stored underneath the building and used to water and care for the surrounding environment.
It was wonderful to have students see and learn about all the different elements that go into planning sustainable communities, especially since our upcoming units will require them to think through this process!
After our tour, we put the plant identification skills they've learned with Mr. Ed to the test. Students navigated through the ecological preserve using a map to find various items for our scavenger hunt.
We ended our day at a local graffiti park! The only rule was that their final product had to convey an environmental message. Other than that, it was all up to them.
I loved watching their creativity fly with these!
I hope you've enjoyed this quick glimpse at some of the things we've been up to! Until next time...
-Ms. Emily
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