The Rookery

On Monday, we began a new electricity theme with a seemingly simple assignment:  using a paperclip and a battery, make a lightbulb light.  The Herons were asked to record every solution they tried and note whether it worked or not. Most thought that it would be easy.  But soon I…

  Another great day.  Sunny and, thanks to our incredible gear, "warm."

  We had a wonderful first day.  Everyone does everything eventually.  Today the Herons survived in the wild, the Kestrels conquered the ropes course and the Robins had an epic adventure snowshoeing on the Superior Trail.  In the evening, groups went on a night hike, rock climbed and directed owl…

We have been looking at different forms of visual information recently as part of our non-fiction study.  Some visual information formats such as the scale drawing are familiar to students but others, such as the procedural drawing or the visual glossary are new.  We are learning about visual information to…

No, this blog isn't about our recent puberty education conversations* but instead about our personal projects.  On Monday, Cathy and I had the pleasure of speaking about the honors project (and by extension the 4th grade project at the Northfield School Board meeting.)  It was our annual report to our…

On Thursday before break, the Herons participated in Hour of Code.  It's an international project which encourages people to learn a little bit about how to write computer code.  Many different learning platforms have activities designed to teach folks some basics in about an hour of time and we used…

        Community Coffee and Special Persons' Day gave us a chance to share our school with the wider community.  The students take their responsibility as hosts very seriously.  We create hand written invitations for our neighbors (the houses and businesses we can walk to safely).  We practice…

The "culminating event" — we use these two words all of the time at Prairie Creek but rarely explain much about its role in our progressive setting.  According to the Herons' favorite dictionary, "to culminate" means to reach the highest point.  When we have a large, multi-faceted theme like our…