High Meadow Newsletter

resolution, has created some impressive energy around the principles of non-violence at HMS. I wonder, if we all focus on peace, in our face-to-face interactions, in our com-munications with out lead-ers, in our group endeav-ors, and in the play-grounds of our minds, per-haps the Alchemy of At-tention can do its work on a grand scale, and make this world a place we are happy to raise our children in. The International Season for Non-Violence wraps up on April 5th @ 7:00, at the Rosendale Theatre, with a collaborative pres-entation between High Meadow and the Rosen-dale Theatre Collective of the film Soundtrack for a

Revolution. This film documents the role that music has played in large-scale societal change and the achievement of peace. Some of our upper school chorus members will be singing as well as other musicians from around the Hudson Valley. Learn more at www.soundtrackforarevol

utionfim.com

Years ago, when I first began at High Meadow School, I coined a phrase, "The Alchemy of Atten-tion". It came out of a common but fascinating phenomenon at our school , that I have to imagine hap-pens at other places, in which many concerned people gather round a prob-lem, cogitate, communi-cate, and something within the problem shifts. The problem may not be imme-diately resolved, but some-thing that once seemed im-movable, intransigent, starts to soften, move, change. Most often at HMS, we are gathering round the struggles of a child or group of children. The staff meets twice a week as a whole, and once a week in small groups called Re-flective Teams. And it is here that all the experts on a child or group of chil-dren, or another school concern will gather, past teachers and present, along with future teachers who will lend an objective eye, to think critically about the problem, devise solutions, and come to speak with one voice, in this work. There

may be a series of meet-ings with parents, with arts teachers, and some-times outside observers or experts are consulted. Plans and follow-up rec-ommendations are made. While all the practical pieces of this process are important, I think it is truly the creative and lov-ing energy that is gener-ated at the table that does the work. It is what hap-pens when a group of peo-ple are able to put their egos aside and focus com-pletely on the solving of what seems to be an im-possible problem. This process is brought to the many problems and puz-zles we face in the daily life of the school, and it never ceases to amaze us...this Alchemy of At-tention. Driving by our weekly words of Non-Violence each week, listening to our students share their peace quotes at Gathering, watching the third grade play on Rosa Parks and the Bus Boycott, having people like Reverend James Childs come in to work with the 4th grade on non-violent conflict

School Closings:

Monday, April 18th

thru

Monday, April 25th

Spring Recess

(no classes held)

Notes from Michelle

High Meadow Newsletter

Newsletter #9

3-10-2011

3643 MAIN ST., STONE RIDGE, NY 12484 PHONE 845.687.4855 FAX 845.687.5151 EMAIL [email protected]

Upcoming Events:

Wednesday, March 16th

&

Thursday, March 17th

5th Grade Drama

Performance

7pm - PAC

~~

Sunday, March 20th

Open House

&

Family Concert

Noon to 2pm

~~

Sunday, April 10th

All School Variety Show

PAC

~~

Saturday, April 30th

John Medeski in Concert

PAC

http://www.soundtrackforarevolutionfim.com/

http://www.soundtrackforarevolutionfim.com/

Events, Updates & Announcements


PLEASE NOTE: School

IS in Session on Fri.

March 18th!

Due to the numerous

snow days this winter, we

have decided to CANCEL

our Staff Development

Day on 3/18th, so there

will be school as usual

that day. This change has

been made to the school

calendar, and an updated

version has been e-mailed

to all families.

Ensemble Night Update:

Please note that the 5th

thru 8th grade Ensemble

Night takes place in the

PAC on Thurs., June 9th

@7pm. An updated

school calendar has been

e-mailed home to all fami-

lies.

Garden Update:

Just a reminder: If you‟re starting to order seeds,

please use the Hudson

Valley Seed Library web-

site. Enter “HMS” in the GreenSeeds promo-

tion code box and we

receive profits for our

organic garden. The

$20 membership is a

great way to start be-

cause you can choose 10

seed packs! They have

a wonderful selection of

local, heirloom, and or-

ganic seeds!

Tanya

3rd Grade Special

Events!

Next Tuesday, March

15th, come Meet the

Artists and Poets at the

Stone Ridge Library at

2:00 p.m! Our class has

an exhibition of poems

and artwork that deserves

an opening! We are hop-

ing you can attend and

bring friends and rela-

tives. Refreshments will

be served! Barbara

Art News Tracy

ART ROOM NEEDS!

1) Please donate your used NY Times! Our art tables need covering against the splish and splash of flying paint & ink!

2) Tuna or catfood sized

cans (well cleaned, por

favor!!) P.S. A huge

thanks to Pat Thompson

for the donation of cool

paper & other arty stuff.

Our 2nd Grade Artists

have completed extensive

work creating their ver-

sions of the old folk art

of apple head dolls.

They are precious as

they stand beside their

portraits on the cubies

outside of the 2nd grade

classroom -- please take

a look! Here is a little

sampling of some of

them hanging above

Tracy's woodstove as

they dried...


Toddler Molly

"A Glorious Mess!" Visit our classroom at almost any moment of the day, and you will find what appears to the cas-ual observer to be a GREAT BIG MESS! Invariably there will be baby blankets strewn on the floor, oodles of matchbox cars scattered on the rug, blocks lining the perimeter of the block area, dry corn from the corn table on the floor, muddy snowpants hang-ing on the drying rack, and droplets of "gloop" dripping from the table. It's enough to make a grown up want to break out the supplies for some spring cleaning. But look a little more closely at the seeming chaos and you will find children fully interacting with materials and each other. Indeed, it very often proves that the messier the room, the more engaged the chil-dren are in their play and their learning. Lately, many of the children have been en-joying a variety of very messy activities, in-

cluding playdough, “gloop” (cornstarch and water), shaving cream and fingerpaint. Each of these materials gives the children a chance to learn through tactile stimula-tion and explore the physical qualities of a variety of different tex-tures - an important sci-entific concept! With fingerpaints, the children enjoy experi-menting with colors and are quick to share their observations and discov-eries with each other. All of these activities inspire social interaction and a chance to explore to-gether - not to mention the chance to make a beautiful gooey mess and practice hand (and arm and face) washing skills! Even those children who do not enjoy getting their hands dirty are contribut-ing to the general messi-ness of the classroom during our play time - it's really a joint effort!

The enthusiasm the chil-dren have for their imagi-native play and explora-tion of classroom materi-als is exciting. More and more frequently, they lose themselves in their activi-ties, becoming kitties or mice in search of food, cars zipping over treacher-ous block roads, or ma-rauding dinosaurs in the corn table. Needless to say, such enthusiastic play brings its share of messi-ness from all participants. When we ring the bell for clean up time, however, Alicia and I have noticed that many of the children do not participate in clean-ing up. Funny how that works! So, while we don't discourage getting messy, we do encourage pitching in for clean up time and have had several class-room discussions about how well and quickly we can clean up when we work together! Reading the wonderful book Pigsty

by Mark Teague and the funny story of Little Oink by Amy Crouse Rosen-thal have further inspired some discussion of mak-ing messes - and cleaning them up. As we enter "Mud Sea-son," we are also experi-encing messiness out of doors - as you have probably noticed! Please be sure to bring in extra clothes and a few extra plastic bags for those ir-resistible mud puddle ex-plorations! Finally, I want to take a moment to welcome a new friend to our 3-year-old class and a new fam-ily to High Meadow. Welcome, welcome to Willa and her parents Deborah and Christo-pher! Willa has jumped right into our messy classroom and is busy making messes with the rest of the children! Happy March to all and Happy Mess-making!

Pre-K Kathy


The kindergarten class is working on a three week project with Roberta Ziemba (August's mom), called "The Dream House Project". The basic idea of this project is for stu-dents to create a sculpture of a house inspired by the neighbors in the story "The Big Orange Splot," by Daniel Manus Pinkwa-ter. In the story the houses are the same until Mr. Plumbean changes his house and inspires the rest of the neighborhood to do the same. This results in a wacky and lively street of houses that celebrate indi-

viduality and creativity. Nan Bress (Ella's mom) will also be working with us to do a documentary on this project. Busy, busy, busy! To wrap up the Winter, we are also working on retelling the story "The Mitten" by Jan Brett, and performing it on the stage for parents and friends on

Thursday March 24th

@ 2:00 in the PAC.

the patterns that are hang-ing on the wall. This project started a conver-sation about the differ-ence between a pattern and a design. I had to promise many of the young artists that they would have a chance to be more creative at a fu-ture date. Please take a moment to let your child explain his or her pattern to you. It might also be fun to find patterns at home together. Keep it simple, just two or three

elements to start. Your children are con-tinuing to amaze Kerry and me with the imagina-tive ways they play to-gether. Every so often a hint of "This is for boys only," or "I only play with girls," creeps in. I'm happy to say this attitude doesn't last very long. These kids love each other too much to push each other away for long! And the really exciting play news is that since the snow's been melting

we've been able to re-claim our little play-ground! The small branches that came down with winter storms are providing wonderful building materials and the climbing structures are once again becoming houses and ships that transport the class far from Stone Ridge. We are ready for Spring!

In the academic world of Prek, we've been look-ing at; identifying and creating patterns. We kicked off by playing a game in which some of the kids formed a line with one child sitting, the next standing, the next sitting, etc. The class had to figure out how to con-tinue the pattern. We've played many fun varia-tions of this game, get-ting our bodies involved in learning. Using paper and glue, the kids created

Kindergarten Cindy


ries. In math we have prac-ticed simple addition and subtraction problems and the concepts of greater than less than. We have chosen several attributes to construct and sort items into sets. The two areas of focus leading us right up to Im-mersion Week are owls and the maple sugaring process. We have begun the process of transform-ing our Paper Mache bal-loons into owls. Our owl pellet investigation will begin as soon as all chil-dren are well and have returned to school.

We have a field trip scheduled for Thurs 3/17

at 9:30 for visiting the

Ashokan Campus Sugar

Shack to see how they turn maple sap into maple syrup. A check on our own sap buckets tells us the sap is definitely running, so this is a great time for a visit. The cost for this trip will be $8.00 per person including adults. Please let us know if would like to be a driver. Your child will be bringing home a permis-sion form for you to return with payment.

1st Grade Kristin

This new focus seems to have sparked their appe-tites and given rise to wonderful feelings of competency and success. I must say your children are amazing! To be privy to this time of growth and observe the awareness they show in their own successes; what priceless moments. In language arts we have been working on listening to rich beautiful nonfiction narrative sto-ries, with specific atten-tion to setting and charac-ters. Children have worked to identify the rising action, problem, and solutions in these sto-

Spring rains and flooding promise such growth and beauty. We are seeing exactly that in the class-room. As your children arrive, we welcome them individually and check in to see how things are go-ing; end of the day sched-ules, lost teeth, birthday parties etc. We then ask them to sit down to do a little work. This work could be a reit-eration of math concepts presented the day before, continuation of research, exercises in Explode the Code phonics workbooks, or their Making Connec-tions comprehension workbooks.

At this point in the year it is remarkable to ob-serve how your children have grown into confi-dent, diligent, and inde-pendent workers. This is a group of investigators, thoughtful thinkers, laughers, and inquirers. I am stimulated, awed, and humbled to be with them each day. In concrete news, we are concluding our jour-ney from the classroom to outer space, and each child has an atlas of our trip which we are in the

process of publishing through Second Grade Press. You could see what rich literate envi-ronments these kids call home as they sat in circle discussing the attributes of book jackets while they prepared to make their own. If you have a moment to stop in over the next few days, I am sure you will find an ea-ger group of authors waiting to share their work. In Math we are further-ing our fluency with sin-

gle digit addition and subtraction facts: second grade is a lot of reinforc-ing these skills and any-thing you can do at home (or in the car!) helps these young math minds grow. Announcements about upcoming events: Next week on Tuesday (assuming we have no more snow days!) we will be celebrating the 100th day of school. An email went home separately explaining this in further detail. Ask your child to

2nd Grade Carrie


tell you about their home-work in preparing for this long awaited date. On Friday, March 25th we will be visiting KokoKobi at his choco-late shop in Kingston. Permission slips will be sent home next week but I wanted to get the date out there to help drivers plan their schedules.

3rd Grade Barbara


Special Events!

Next Tuesday, March 15th, come Meet the

Artists and Poets at the

Stone Ridge Library at

2:00 p.m. Our class has an exhibition of poems and artwork that deserves an opening! We are hop-ing you can attend and bring friends and rela-tives. There will be re-freshments.

Friday, April 1st

Play at UPAC. More

info to follow!

The children presented their nonfiction projects to the class this week. The posters were detailed and colorful. Each child knew the material and was well versed in an-swering questions and comments. The posters

are hanging for all to see. Thank you for your help in assisting in this home-work assignment. We have begun our geo-graphic study of North America with a deep fo-cus on the United States. Each child has chosen a state to research and, to tell the truth, it is very exciting! Our booklets should be completed by the end of the week. This knowledge will allow the study of Tall Tales to be-gin. In math class we have begun learning the algo-rithm for subtraction. The children have been subtracting all year using many different mental exercises. This is a very strong math group and I

am very pleased with their progress. We are sewing our quilts with the codes from the Underground Railroad. This is a very important part of our life skills cur-riculum. The children are very proud of their hard work. In language arts we are hard at work fine tuning our perfect paragraph. Parts of speech such as subject, predicate, con-junctions and grammar are daily reinforced. We are also paying close attention to our spelling rules and punctuation. Last but not least, Jaden is hoping we finish our lower case cursive letters this week. He can not wait to begin upper case

letters. The push is on! Please have your child bring in a set of clothes as the playground is muddy and wet. Thank you, Barbara

4th Grade Jackie


We have been particu-larly challenged in math this week, with a lot of attention being paid to working with decimal numbers. It is incredible how useful it is to relate these numbers to their monetary counterparts. It would be really helpful if you could provide natural opportunities for your children to count change and then identify the ap-propriate decimal number (i.e., 0.75 for seventy five cents). Thanks so much for your support in this endeavor. Our Mimi ex-perience has got-ten really intense as the crew is cur-rently stranded on an island that is completely wild. We learned about hypothermia this week, as our be-loved Captain Granville col-lapsed after hav-

ing saved the crew and boat from a wild storm. Your children would love to tell you the details, so be sure to ask! Our archipelago project is moving along slowly but surely. Currently, the children are completing their CIA Fact Sheets that provide details of their individual archipelagos and we are beginning to work on the identification of the four components of culture that exist in every society. Once we complete this challenging work we will

(finally) be ready to begin writing our creation myths. The children are really excited about get-ting there! Finally, we are nearing the end of our experience with Karana. The children continue to delight in ex-ploring her impressive ap-proach to finding her courage, establishing inde-pendence and addressing her need for companion-ship in positive and mean-ingful ways. She is truly a role model. Your children display

their love and commit-ment to their academic work every day, and it continues to be a joy to share my days with them. Best, Jackie

High Meadow Newsletter Page 10

5th Grade Betty & Allyson

Math:

We began our return to school by graphing linear equations. We looked at the relationships between algebraic equations with 2 variables such as x + y = 7, x - y = 7, 2x + y = 7, x + 2y = 7, etc. Once this skill was well in hand, we moved on to learning how to graph inequalities. Petey says, "We are do-ing graphing inequalities like x + y > 4. We show this on the graph by dash-ing the line, finding coor-dinates for x and y that make this true, like 5 + 6 > 4, and plotting these points. We learned that we could shade in the areas on the graph that make the statement x + y > 4 true. We also have found the intersection of two inequalities."

Science:

What a hubbub sur-rounds this time when the students are finalizing their 400 square foot homes and figuring out what rooms and pieces of furniture will fit into this tiny space. Spike adds, "For Science we are drawing our houses on graph paper and are add-ing everything we need. Then we take the drawing to the Building Inspector. If the Building Inspector approves it, we get to

enlarge it on big graph paper to make it look twice as large. If your house was 20 boxes long to start with, we draw it 40 boxes long on the larger graph paper.

Humanities:

We are happily enscon-sed in Ancient Greece! The students have com-pleted a timeline that be-gins with the Minoans and moves through the Trojan War and Mcycaeanae, in-cluding the Dark Ages. We are reading a transla-tion of The Odyssey ex-amining the myths con-tained therein as well as the nature and function of the hero. Our literary studies also include a memoir by Gary Paulsen, Woodsong. This is a thrilling book and beautifully written! It is a perfect springboard from which the students can launch their own memoirs. Next Wednesday is the first performance of our musical adaptation of The Search for Delicious. This has been an extremely gratifying process for all of us! These children are so adept and prepared for such an ambitious project. They have brought these terrific characters to life! Brian and Susan P. (Hudson‟s parents) have jumped into the breech

and produced costumes and properties and the score Debbie Lan has written is my favorite to date. I hope everyone will be able to join us for per-formances Wednesday

the 16th and Thursday

the 17th at 7:00 p.m.

Art:

"We made these pop-out paper mask engineering project creatures where the eyes pop out. We named them and gave them a quote. It was all white paper where we taped them until the glue dried. Some people used colored paper shreds for hair. These will be shown at the art show." By Cali and Isa

Spanish:

"We are doing family trees and if you were done with it, you could play Scrabble. We also had to write sentences in Spanish about 3 people from your family. These are hanging up downstairs near the Spanish room." By Jonah and Emma

Dance: "We finished two of our dances and are working on „Because We Can, Can, Can.‟ We've only com-pleted the first minute of this dance but it's fun." by Eliza and India

PE: “We've been playing Knock Out, Monarch, and fun athletic games. A lot of the games are with balls, and we're learning how to aim. Knock Out helped us learn how to shoot and Monarch was learning how to pass. In Monarch you can only take 3 steps before you pass or throw the squishy dodge ball." By Chance and Ruby

Ensembles:

"In Chorus we are sing-ing „Uncle Albert,‟ „Somebody to Love‟ and „Up, Up and Away.‟” By Ana "In PIE we are learning more on „Arco Arena‟ and we have a work in progress starting our own music piece with vocals, stomping and clapping." By Hudson "In Guitar we are doing the Simpson's theme song and we are going to start to do some song writing

too." By Nitya

Humanities:

The sixth grade has em-barked on their study of Russia. It has proven quite compelling from the very start. With "Russia before the Russians" we have encountered some of the most thrilling and frightening nomadic tribes to have settled any of an-cient civilizations yet! Surprisingly the later and less barbaric families who became the "princes" of Russia are no less excit-ing. The history surround-ing both Ivan the Great and Terrible, as well as Peter and Catherine, are "Great" stories, not to mention how impressed we are with the vast geog-raphy and its harsh de-mands. This is a civiliza-tion to be reckoned with! Parvana's Journey is the focus of our literary stud-ies. The students have exhibited such strong emotional responses to this suspenceful, heart-wrenching historic novel set in Afghanistan. Their journal entries are quite moving and reveal such empathy and compassion. These are really driving our class discussions and deepening our apprecia-tion and understanding of irony, tension and mood.


6th Grade Allyson & Betty

Our class play is coming along nicely! We are fre-quently overcome with hysterical laughter as we improvise these Asian fairy tales.

Math:

The past few weeks have seen numerous ill-nesses come and go. To-day we were missing 5 students from our class! Despite this, we have pulled through with stu-dents calling friends for assignments, homework make-ups, etc. And we have been bustling in class as well. We have finished all of our work (for now) on fractions. We then began looking at numbers in terms of their being prime or composite and divisibility rules for num-bers. We then took on a review of short and long division. Instead of a test

which had both short and long division skills on it, the students opted to take separate tests in each of these skills. There are so many dis-parate parts to the long division process and this really asks students to multi-task to some ex-tent. The students did just fine on this work. After a review of graphing coordinates, we then took on a re-view of last year's work in graphing linear equa-tions. It was amazing to see how easily this was recollected. The stu-dents then challenged themselves to imagining not just what a line for x + y = 7 looks like, but what 20x + 2y = 100 would look like, or what these would look like if instead of addition, the equation included sub-traction. We just

broached the whole "what happens when you multi-ply a negative by a nega-tive" question, which al-lows us to be able to graph equations like” x squared + y = 100". The kids are so ready for this work, and it is a joy to see their en-thusiasm for it.

Science:

Science projects are still in the "working mode" and we will be presenting our projects on the Respi-ratory System on or before March 17th. From here we will move on to the Circulatory System. We have lungs, bronchi, alveoli and broncioles in every shape and form be-ing worked on currently, and RoseNDale actually has a working set of lungs, along with his/her newly added Digestive System. Let‟s hope that our vi-ruses are gone, the weather settles, and our vacations are warm memories so that our work continues on a more even keel! Betty

7th Grade Peter & AnnMarie


Humanities:

The 7th grade humanities class has just completed presentations on the Afri-can regions. The 7th grade has just started a new unit on Latin America. We have just introduced Es-peransa Rising, a book about a young girl grow-ing up during the Mexican revolution. Along with the book, we are starting a web quest where we break up into four groups of: Mexican culture, The Mexican revolution, Fa-

mous Mexicans, and Mi-grant workers and Labor camps. By Maya d.

Science:

In science the 7th grad-ers have finished our so-lar system projects, and will be starting the study in geology next week.

Math:

In math, we are learning about the Set Theory, and the vocabulary about the Set Theory. We have

also begun exploring the Pythagorean Theorem. We have also concluded our exploration in the Py-thagorean Theorem.

Spanish:

In Spanish we are work-ing on creating family trees, and writing para-graphs on five members in our family. In this process, we are learning the names of family members in Spanish. It is a fun, and creative way of learning the names of our

8th Grade AnnMarie & Peter

Humanities:

In Humanities we are reading The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton. This is a book written from the view of fourteen-year-old greaser in the early 60‟s. We have all really been enjoying the book and talking about which paragraphs really touched us. In History we are re-searching feudal roles in Medieval Europe and are preparing monologues of the various members from feudal society. We‟ll pre-sent our monologues to each other next week.

Math:

We have just finished ex-ploring the Pythagorean Theorem, one of the most celebrated theorems in all of mathematics. Not only

does this theorem have applications for making indirect measurements and testing whether or not an angle is 90 degrees but it has been proven in hundreds of different ways and has extensions into higher dimensions! Among the proofs we looked at is one involving proportions that, it is said, a twelve-year old Albert Einstein came up with! We are now study-ing linear equations and their graphs as well as the many applications related to them. 8th grade sci-ence: The 8th grade has just finished their reports on the planets of the So-lar System. Along with written papers that were handed in each student gave a presentation and

answered questions relat-ing to their topic. We have now finished with the astronomy section of our science studies and will be moving on to study geology. Peter

Ensembles:

In our music electives we are all gearing up for our end of year perform-ance. We are working on the “Simpson Theme Song” in Guitar, and Queens, “Somebody to Love” in Chorus. In P.I.E. (percussion instru-mental ensemble) we are working on smaller parts of a larger end of year piece.

Art:

In 8th grade Art we are working with Tracy to

family members, and great practice.

By Sahana

Dance:

In the upper school dance class we are “buckling down*” for our end of year perform-ance, and our show at the Figures in Flight dance Recital. We are

planning a Saturday

rehearsal on April 30th.

By Maya M.(*Quote

from Kayla)

explore personal themes for our final art project at High Meadow School. We are using drawing, sculpture and other me-diums to explore our personal themes.

Dance:

In Dance class we are working on two separate pieces: one for the girls and one for the boys. We are also trying to finish up some addi-tional partnering dances before we can move on to others.

P.E.:

In P.E. we have been playing games with group building skills and also gearing up for tak-ing the Presidential Fit-ness Test. By Cady

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