New Beginnings

BEAM Team 9/12/2025

Meet the BEAM team, a group of specialist that work with our Classroom teachers to integrate books(B), ecology(E), art(A) and music(M) throughout our hands-on, nature based curriculum. You will meet them all and learn more about our program next week at Curriculum Night. For now, enjoy a brief update on what they have been cooking up so far.

Books with Siobhan in the Library

Ecology in the field with evan

Art in(and outside) the Studio with Nina

Musical Storytelling with Michael

In (and out of) the Studio with Nina

Welcome to the studio!

In the studio this week, we're focusing on learning the routines of the studio, and starting to make art together! We've been meeting and working on the studio’s porch as we jump right into creating together. During these first days, we’ve been talking about our studio agreements, taking tours of our space and materials, meeting the Studio Scale of Feelings animals (we use them to check in about how we're feeling at the start of our time together!) and customizing our sketchbooks. We’ll use our sketchbooks throughout the year to free draw, sketch out ideas for a project, and practice new skills.

In addition to this start of the year work, we’ve jumped right into the work of artists this week, as we explore who we are as artists and what art media we’re interested in. Our first big project is to explore the Elements of Art through different mediums. We’re starting off strong with LINE, which we'll be looking at through the lens of printmaking in the Carriage House, painting in the Neighborhood, and crayon and monoprinting in the Downstairs. Our deep dive into LINE will continue next week and then we'll move onto exploring more Elements of Art.

I look forward to sharing more of our work with you!

Notes from the Field with evan

You wait for August, Then you wait for May

You wait for something that will make the wait, worth the wait

~Built to Spill, 2006

3 Sister Garden: May 2025

3 Sisters Garden: September 2026

There is a famous, if dated, book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. A somewhat more recent (but still dated) version could be called Everything I Really Need to Know I Learned from 90's and early 2000s Alternative Music. Our garden is the perfect example of the wisdom contained in the lyrics above. In between planting the seeds and harvesting the corn, weeding and watering- you wait. Good things take time. You can also glean some pretty weighty lessons from a garden, and our 3 Sisters Garden is an evergreen powerhouse within our Science curriculum. Visiting this space in any season throughout the year places one at a moment in time within a broad and complex cycle. The story of our garden has no end and links back thousands of years to the Wappinger people who farmed the land our school is on using similar techniques and tools and harvesting those seminal crops: Sister Corn, Sister Bean and Sister Squash. Simply by paying close attention to the rhythms of nature we have the opportunity to explore some advanced scientific concepts, from natural selection of seed varieties to insect parasitism and the symbiotic connections between flower anatomy and pollinator phenology.

Today, our garden is a place where those ideas are made visible and are accessible to each member of our community from youngest to oldest. Randolph School's core values: joy, curiosity, community, and nature-inspired learning are broadcast across each beaming face of a child holding in their hands a fully formed ear of corn that they previously knew as a seedling. It is purely organic educational magic. Not only has each child been invited to learn about life cycles, plant reproduction and nutrition, they have learned that they are a part of the story. Their care, effort and patience produced a garden full of food and possibilities. Today we celebrate our harvest and marvel in its abundance, but there is no time to rest in this season of natural bounty. The garden is ever in flux and there is always work to be done. The next time you see these fruits and vegetables they will be incorporated into our math work as we sort, weigh and count, compare and categorize. Or they will be in a soup pot as we learn about the folktale of Stone Soup and prepare our own autumnal community feast. They might be transformed into still life paintings in the art studio. There is no telling where are journey will take us this year, but we can assure you that the fantastic destinations we reach together will be worth the wait.

New for This Year: Mushrooms!

Fungus among us! We were treated to a well-timed surprise on our first day of school: edible mushrooms! Last spring we noticed that our attempts at a strawberry patch on the Lower Playground were floundering due to an over abundance of shade. As we research plants that would be shade tolerant we stumbled up mushroom cultivation. We purchased sawdust wine cap spawn from a distributor and inocculated our plot. Unlike our 3 Sisters Garden, waiting for mushrooms is more of an act of faith. The land looks unchanged for months on end and then one day(luckily when we were all on campus), pop! They all fruit at once. It was the perfect introduction to the way we approach our Science program at Randolph. We pay attention to our surroundings and respond quickly when nature offers us a gift. Children quickly dropped what they were doing to work together to make sure we could pick our mushrooms at their freshest. Another important lesson about food preservation ensued as we thought of the best way to help our perishable mushrooms last until our Harvest Feast in November. We have been busy dehydrating our bounty and vacuum sealing it for safe and tasty keeping.

Back in the Stacks with Siobhan

I am happy to report that the library is officially buzzing with the energy of a new year, as we learn and relearn all the things necessary to keep this communal space comfy, cozy, and running smoothly.

We're putting books on the Koob Cart instead of reshelving them ourselves (or leaving them on the floor!). The Koob Cart got its name from a group of elder Randolph kids about four years ago. "Koob" is "book" spelled backwards, which makes sense because it is the place where you return the book after you have looked at it or read it for a little while. Get it?

We are learning and remembering how to check out books, which all the children do independently on our touch screen computer. First, you scan the barcode on the back of the books with the laser. Then you click checkout. Then you find your name and click on it. And then the book is checked out to you for one week!

We are cozying up with Rex the Library Dog. Rex is great for snuggling, he helps our bodies stay peaceful, and he loves to be read to. There is some interesting research that says that reading to pets can help beginning and emergent readers build confidence. Rex is a stand-in for a real live pet here at school.

Mostly, we are reading and enjoying books. As the year goes on, I look forward to learning what each child is interested in reading, how I can support them in finding new things to read, and making sure they feel seen and welcomed in our library. Here's to a great year!

Musical Storytelling with Michael

It was a lovely sight to see all my old friends and new ones gathered at the Randolph campus this week. As my first day coincided with the Corn Moon, bringing out the hand drums seemed like a fait accompli.

There were new names to learn, and Ben, Zane and Cash started us off with a single syllable. One syllable each, so one beat.

Eleanor gave us three beats, so then we could combine the one 'beat' and the three 'beats' with body percussion.

We worked on how that feels, and how that sounds on our legs, or bellies or with stomping our feet.

We also warmed up with listening games, and I presented them with my own list of sounds that I had heard in the first ten minutes of my waking. After reading that list, we chose several and used the words as springboards for rhythms games.

"Alarm clock" and "Surly Cat" were my favorite, as I love three's in music.

We broke up those sounds and applied them to the hand drums and Tambourines. We got loud!

We grew quiet..

It was a great start!!

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