Our latest adventure brought us to the famous Albany Pine Bush. The children ran through the sandy terrain asking questions all the way. The heavey clouds and overcast scene did not hold us back. We explored the trails and wove our way around for about 1 mile before the kids sat down in the sand and created sand castles and sand sculptures.
Later, after our lunch and outdoor exploration, we headed inside the discovery center where we watched a video, learned about the animals and insects in the Pine Bush and learned about the changing landscape of the sand dunes. Stay tuned for our next weekly adventure....
This next week we will go out to the land in Grafton. (Parents be warned- we will go on Thursday instead of our normal Friday trip!) Please be prepared to bring the same stuff... Car seat, warm coat and boots, and $2 for gas!
Our second Friday adventure brought all the upstairs kids to the Peace Pagoda to visit with Jun San.
We sang fun songs while the van trekked east towards the foot of the berkshires.
The day was perfect! We explored the Grafton land and when it was almost too cold, we were invited in to a beautiful lunch at the temple. We shared carrots and pumpkins ( all homegrown from the freeschool kitchen garden ) with Jun San and she shared stories of her latest Peace Walk.
We are excited to announce that Fridays are upstairs adventure days!!!! Our first Friday of the school year, we packed up the van, and headed to FIVE RiVERS where the kids tromped through the famous beaver path.
While hiking the path we spotted frogs, beautiful acorns (Mike Berry uses these for his math lessons! ), and a great blue heron. We stopped long enough at each new turn to really enjoy the crisp air and watch to see if the leaves where really ready to turn vibrant shades of yellow, red, and orange.
The kids enjoyed seeing the owl inside the center, but were more captivated by the dead garter snake that was found on the path. Everyone gathered to sing 'dear ones' and they had an inpromtu burial near its spotting! These kids are amazing curious people! It is always fun to spend time with th 3-5 year olds out in the world!
The upstairs world is full of exciting experiences. This week we have gone sledding at the basketball park, played in an igloo found at the top of the hill and danced to afro-beats to keep ourselves warm in this freezing cold weather. Our kids are painting beautiful picutres and learning about the letter "P" in all sorts of fun ways ( creating P's with our own bodies and finding words that start with P...Planet! Pluto!). Since our students are such imaginative story tellers, we have just begun writing down stories in their own words....Stay tuned for some of our kids stories!!!! Every day is an exciting one! We look forward to sharing our many adventures with you!
We are blessed to have so many people sharing their own gifts and talents with our students. Thank you volunteers for sharing your music : Deb and Celia (our traveling musical friend ), and for sharing your artistic time- Sonia, Victoria and Stacey.
The second and third grade class worked hard to raise money to explore the Big Apple. We had multiple bake sales and one amazing, fun, exciting and successful mother's day cafe (that really raised most of the money! ) Thank you to all of you who enjoyed and bought our sweets!
When we boarded the van we were all very excited to get our trip underway. For many of the students this was their first adventure exploring the Bronx and Manhattan. Our first stop was the Bronx Zoo. We ate lunch and headed toward Tiger Mountain. There was a huge crowd gathering around the Tiger's entrance and the kids snuck their selves to the front of the crowd so they could get an up-close view of the gigantic Tiger eating a ball of meat from a stick! We walked all over the zoo, enjoyed a tram ride through a safari like atmosphere, and ended up in the World of Darkness where the kids saw beautiful bats from all over the world. Our Zoo day was a huge sucess. We hopped in the van and started our next adventure ..... Manhattan!
Our second Friday adventure brought all the upstairs kids to the Peace Pagoda to visit with Jun San. 
We are excited to announce that Fridays are upstairs adventure days!!!! Our first Friday of the school year, we packed up the van, and headed to FIVE RiVERS where the kids tromped through the famous beaver path. 
The second and third grade class worked hard to raise money to explore the Big Apple. We had multiple bake sales and one amazing, fun, exciting and successful mother's day cafe (that really raised most of the money! ) Thank you to all of you who enjoyed and bought our sweets!
