Where most classrooms end, North Country School classrooms begin, and this week saw our students examining traditional lessons with a nontraditional lens in our academic program, in the arts, and on our farm. Even our outdoor program got creative this week, working around a rainy and icy weekend to get in some quality play time both on and off campus. With snow on the horizon, we look forward to Whiteface ski afternoons beginning next Tuesday at Whiteface Mountain Ski Resort, as well as the beginning of the season for our cross-country ski team.
ACADEMICS
This week our Spanish 2 students practiced their house-related vocabulary by staging scenes in a dollhouse. Using verbs such as “to wash,” “to sit,” and “to go to bed,” along with nouns related to rooms and objects in a house, students set up silly scenarios that their peers were tasked to describe and translate into Spanish. The group, including students Ella, Sally, Tianyu, and Julia, made their tiny dollhouse residents fall asleep in the refrigerator, stand on the toilet, and store themselves under the sink as their classmates used relevant vocabulary to transcribe their observations.
In Gavi’s 4th-and-5th grade math class, students are learning about coordinate planes. To practice their lesson, the group played games of Battleship against one another, plotting their own ships on positive and negative points on a plane and guessing the location of their opponent’s plotted battleships. Duncan celebrated as his “-5, +4” guess gained him a hit on opponent Justin’s battleship, while Wyatt’s strategy of guessing points in sequential order allowed him to work methodically through opponent Kalina’s plotted board.
ARTS
Photo Recreation class continued work on their group photo project this week, planning and staging their recreated image from the cartoon Scooby Doo. The class, which includes students Alex, Josh, JT, Isabella, Tony, and Daven, set up their shot in the Main Building library before heading over to the costume closet to search for items that match their images of Daphne, Velma, Fred, Shaggy, and Scooby.
Both jewelry class and Design and Build class were working in miniature this week. Jewelry teacher Katie W.’s students are working on tiny jump-ring chains, learning a complicated pattern called the Byzantine weave. Next week the class will be moving into jewelry-making using beads and wire.
In Design and Build class, teacher Larry’s students are continuing to work on their designs for the Main Building community lounge space. The class, which includes students Elizabeth, Koga, Alejandro, Sky, Jessica, Tyler, and Colton, have been creating a miniature model of the lounge space and their intended building structures. The group designs, which they plan to begin building in actual scale in the upcoming weeks, include slides, a climbing tree, and tucked away “cave” spaces.
OUTDOORS
This week presented the NCS community with tricky weather in the form of warm temperatures, rain, and ice. Saturday trips adapted to these conditions by incorporating different spaces and some creativity into their plans. Sierra’s Saturday trip combined photography with their outdoor excursions, taking photos around the North Country School campus and nearby downtown Lake Placid. Melissa and Colin’s Saturday trip brought students to Colin’s indoor climbing gym, where students including Evie, Inyene, and Tyler were able to try out the bouldering walls.
Colder weather throughout the week refroze our hockey pond, allowing out-times to take advantage of the beautiful ice skating conditions. Students including Frederick, Elizabeth, and Grace skated around the pond as the evening light hit the tops of Cascade and Pitchoff mountains in the distance.
FARM AND GARDEN
The mission of the Edible Schoolyard program is to give our students the knowledge and values to make food choices that are healthy for themselves, their communities, and the environment. Throughout the winter season, the program focuses on how we can adapt what we cook and eat to continue supporting local agriculture, even as seasonal availability changes.
This week our 4th-6th grade Edible Schoolyard class began learning about recipes using seasonally available ingredients including eggs and flour. To start their lesson, the class traveled across campus to our farm to ask Barn Manager Erica questions about our flock of chickens. Erica showed the class how to use a light to “candle” an egg, which helps to determine whether or not that egg has been fertilized, before fielding questions about egg production and a chicken’s life cycle. The group then collected an egg each from the chicken’s nesting boxes in our chicken coop, bringing those eggs back to the Teaching and Learning Kitchen to make fresh homemade pasta. As the term continues the class will be making more recipes using grains, dairy, eggs, and storage crops, taking advantage of and appreciating the local food available during the long Adirondack winter.
Check back next week to see what we’re up to on our mountain campus.
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