This fall we’ve added a new material and printmaking technique to our art explorations. The new-to-us gelatin printing plates have taken our printmaking to a new level! They are squishy and bend, like Jello, they are great for monoprinting and for creating negative space prints using leaves, corks, feathers, and all sorts of other found objects. The Neighborhood and Carriage House have used these plates to create beautiful, creative, and unique leaf prints as a continuation of their observational leaf work with Nina and evan. As they continued their leaf work, the Fungi Friends continued their circle exploration using the same materials- gelatin plates, tempera paint, brayers, and texture tools. They experimented with amounts of paint, Making circles with a variety of materials, from corks to fingers to napkin rings. 

The gardens at Randolph School represent the depth and richness that is possible when a curriculum is rooted in the land and has practical outcomes. The children are interested in what is happening in the garden, because they see(and taste) what their efforts produce. As we put the gardens to bed this year and talk about how plants prepare for the winter months ahead, there is an opportunity to plant and learn about bulbs.

Our Links curriculum is an invitation to our teacher to think expansively about what it means to learn and construct meaning. When evan wants to teach about leaf anatomy he is drawing on all of the tools available to him to create a space where learning is interactive, complex, multidisciplinary, creative and collaborative. It's a tall order, and our teachers have become experts at it. Here is an example of a leaf anatomy lesson that grew and developed into an opportunity for students to build, create, read, and learn scientific principles together. The end products are pretty sensational, too!

The Three Sisters are an important part of our curriculum. The teachings of the Three Sisters come to us from cultures indigenous to the Americas, and they are complex and connect to Indigenous scientific and cultural understandings of ecology, myth and community. Since planting our own Three Sisters garden we have been researching and trying to learn as much as we can about how this brilliant farming technique was practiced by various tribal communities in this part of the world.