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Eileen K. - Independent Newspaper - FAX: 254-0486
1997 04-22-jc Water Day
1997 04-18-sc Shakespeare's Birthday
Party
1997 04-01-sc GIGANTIC GLOBE
1997 02-17-sc Family Involvement at The
New School
1996 12-06-sc The New School Spreads
Holiday Spirit
1996 10-22-sc Halloween Performance by
The New School
1996 10-22-jc Halloween Around The New
School
1996 10-04-sc Our ships have come in!
1996 10-01-sc 8-MILE WALK TO RAISE MONEY
FOR ST. MARK'S SOUP KITCHEN
1996 09-20-sc Boat Day at The New School
1996 07-30-ks SUMMER MONSTERS
"Water, water everywhere and even some to drink!" May 1st marks the culmination of a two-month long in- depth exploration of water by the younger students (ages 5 - 8) at The New School of Monmouth County. As a climax to the project, for the past two weeks the students and teachers in this class have been setting up an elaborate water environment and writing a humorous but fact-based interactive presentation to share with their parents on May 1st. For this presentation two student MCs will lead the parents through a series of experiments, dramatic presentations, songs and poems chosen developed and presented by the students all expanding scientific properties and literary impressions of that vital substance -- WATER. The setting for this presentation is a completely transformed classroom. The students and teachers have set up a real pond complete with water, waterfall, plants and fishes, and created with their artwork a surrounding environment including recorded sounds . Another area of the classroom has a sand table where various water formations made by erosion are demonstrated in the sand. A rain-forest experience can be encountered in yet another area -- again created with artwork and sounds, and in another space a water table has been set up for various experiments demonstrating the properties and measurement of water.
Parents will be included in experiments, asked questions, invited to do a water tasting (Can you tell the difference between tap and spring water?) and join in with songs written by the students.
The students study and exploration of water has included field trips to follow a brook from its source to the ocean (visiting it at strategic points); comparing the ocean and the bay, studying various ponds and observing dams, waterfalls and reservoirs; recording their observations with drawings and photographs.
A visit from a water company expert provided the opportunity to ask questions about how the water gets to our faucets and learn about the process of water purification. Poems, stories and songs have been an integrated part of the project, balancing out the more scientific aspects and giving the students many opportunities for creative writing.
As with all the projects at The New School, emphasis is on the learning process, the involvement of each child in creating, questioning, and understanding and in making learning fun. Water Day in the younger class on May 1st promises to be all of these things.
1997 04-18-sc Shakespeare's Birthday Party
"Neither a borrower nor a lender be." "All that glitters is not gold." "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse." "To be or not to be, that is the question." "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
Shakespeare is quoted second only to the bible and is feared and revered by countless numbers of people. But although few would deny his genius, for the majority their encounters with the Bard in their formal education was often terrifying or boring.
Susan Chilvers, Ed. Dr. of the N.S. has been a lifelong fan of Shakespeare (her father took her to see Midsummer Night's Dream when she was 9 and she was hooked) she wanted the children at The New School to encounter Shakespeare in a way that would be fun and understandable so they would enjoy his works as much as she did. So they began a year-long study of his plays and characters, telling the stories, acting out scenes, reading his sonnets, writing their own, talking about the characters and drawing parallels in their own lives.
Shakespeare is all about human nature, our emotions, our weaknesses -- he gives us examples of how our strengths can betray us if we are not aware.
Children love the drama, the humor, the intrigue and all the misunderstandings that lead sometimes to laughter, sometimes to disaster. Shakespeare characters are bold, overstated, larger than life because he wrote for the ordinary people of his time, not the elite, and his goal was to entertain. Even with the language difference, if Shakespeare is performed the stories are understood. In their study of Shakespeare they have seen many performances on stage, screen and video and become familiar so far with 12 of his 37 plays. Next week they are celebrating Shakespeare's birthday (April 23rd) with a party in his honor (he would have been 433 years old). The students in the older class (ages 11 - 14) are hosting the party for the younger children in the school. old. In addition to composing a birthday song to sing, the students have made "Shakespearean" invitations using appropriate language and illustrations. They have made large collages to decorate the room and planned games such as "Shakespeare Jumble" -- sorting mixed-up letters to spell names of Shakespeare's plays and "Put the Donkey's head on Bottom" (a variation of Pin the Tail on the Donkey and a reference to the magic in Midsummer Night's Dream). The students will dress up as Shakespearean characters for the party and serve food appropriate to the period, plus a cake decorated with a Shakespearean theme.
No party would be complete without goody bags and at Shakespeare's party these will include ingredients to make your own mini "Tempest", a few select (edible) "goodies" from the Witches Brew in MacBeth and a word search puzzle of Shakespeare's characters.
The party will conclude with our birthday tribute (sung):
Shakespeare is our favorite Bard.
Learning his stuff isn't hard.
Sonnets are a piece of cake.
Iambic meter's all it takes.
We cry with all his tragedies.
And laugh with all the comedies.
Shakespeare is our favorite Bard.
Our favorite Bard.
At The New School of Monmouth County the older class students (ages 11 - 14) have taken the World into their own hands this week as they embarked on the making of a giant globe. The papier mache model has been shaped on an oversized ball and measures 12 feet in circumference. The students made the globe in two halves using the ball as a base and joined the two halves together after the sections had dried. Next they will paint the "globe" and then transfer scale drawings of the World's countries onto the globe's surface and paint them. Finally the globe will be sprayed with shellac to preserve the surface.
Jay Smith, the students' teacher, has made globes before with the students and finds it a great way to interest them in the geography of the World. In past years they have made individual globes (using balloons and paper mache) and they have made one or two bigger globes, but this one is the largest undertaking yet. "With a great surface area", said Mr. Smith, "it is easier to paint on the countries and get an accurate scale. Besides this, there is the fun of working on a large scale and cooperating as a group -- everyone in the class can do part of it."
A project-based curriculum is fundamental to The New School philosophy and many subject areas are integrated into each project. Besides the obvious curriculum area of geography, the global project encompasses art, a variety of math skills (measuring, scale distances, etc.), writing -- both factual (writing up the process of making the globe) and creative ("If the World was really this size what would I do?"), and science (how the earth formed, etc.).
When the globe is completed parents and the younger students at the school will be invited to share it and ask questions about how it was made and play the "Find-The Country; Find-This-Water" Game created by the older students. This game is color- coordinated with the painting of the globe to help students with the answers. Later in the year the globe will be displayed in a local library. For more information call Susan Chilvers, Educational Director(908-787-7900).
1997 02-17-sc Family Involvement at The New School
"A family school" is a phrase often used to describe The New School. This term usually refers to the fact that The New School is ungraded, so children of mixed ages interact and work together in a family atmosphere. But the term encompasses more than that. Parents are encouraged to participate fully in the school and often describe its atmosphere as an extended family. In addition to helping in the classes with special projects or the general daily activities they also undertake regular workshops to maintain the building and grounds and build new equipment.
Even the parents of one of the school's directors, Jay Smith, have for many years been involved in building maintenance and furniture building. Commuting periodically from Bedford, Pennsylvania, Jay and Polly Smith spend time at The New School using their carpentry skills to the school's advantage. Recently they built new birch library bookshelves and window seats -- a much needed addition for the expanding library.
In addition to their work for the school the Smith's also offer hospitality to the students when they take week-long field trips through Pennsylvania stopping in Bedford en route.
From: Susan Chilvers (908-787-7900)
1996 12-06-sc The New School Spreads Holiday Spirit
This week one of the ungraded classes at The New School of Monmouth County spent a rewarding morning at King James Care Facility in Middletown working with residents making Christmas wreaths and Hanukkah stars. The activity involved gluing crumpled tissue paper onto cardboard shapes and covering the entire surface in red and green or blue and white or in some cases red, green, blue and white! The children, aged 8 - 10, were soon busily engaged with the residents decorating the tissue paper with flowers, holly, bows, bells and reindeer made from clothespins.
The elderly patients chatted with their young partners and as they worked they were delighted with the results -- which many of them hung on their doors when they returned to their rooms.
Continuing in the holiday spirit The New School students plan to return to the nursing home next week to present a program of holiday music to the residents on Thursday, December 12 at 2:00 PM. King James is located at 1040 Highway 35 in Middletown (Navesink). For more information call Susan Chilvers (908-787-7900), Educational Director at The New School of Monmouth County.
1996 10-22-sc Halloween Performance by The New School
On Friday, November 1st some of the children from The New School of Monmouth County (ages 5 - 11) will take their musical instruments, songs and some of their art work to King James Care Center in Middletown and do a Halloween program there for the residents.
The students want to make the program as interactive as possible so residents can join in and enjoy the experience. A number of Halloween 'rounds' such as 'Are You Creeping', 'Three Black Bats' and 'The Wackiest Witch' (all with familiar tunes) are included in the singing plus an animal favorite 'The 12 Days of Halloween' which includes 78 paper puppets (made by the students) which are used as props. The program also includes dancing, action songs, percussion instruments and recorder playing and Halloween costumes will be worn -- definitely the intention is to treat not trick!
1996 10-22-jc Halloween Around The New School
On Thursday October 31st the younger children at The New School of Monmouth County are celebrating Halloween in a special way. They are inviting parents into school for a presentation of their six-week long ROUND project which has extended to include Halloween. Obviously pumpkins are round and a pumpkin cake will be one refreshment highlight, but the singing of Halloween "rounds" -- "Are You Creeping?", "Three Black Cats", etc. -- may be a more subtle connection.
Since September the younger class at The New School of Monmouth County have been looking AROUND them for anything that is ROUND because this multi-aged group (5 - 8) has been exploring a cross-curriculum project on round things. They started with a round table on which they have so far collected 137 different round things ranging from cactus to ball-bearings, from coins to Frisbees and from balloons to oranges. The children brain stormed round things and discussed the differences between cylindrical and spherical. They categorized their brainstorming into such groups as foods, natural things and body parts. Singing (besides Halloween "rounds") has included the writing of a round song to also be sung for parents accompanied by student-made round paper mache shakers. Measuring, counting and weighing round objects, taking surveys and working with coins has provided a lot of practical math experience, while work with foods, seeds, wheels, pulleys and "find out what is inside a golf-ball, etc." has made many tangents into science.
A collection of cardboard tubes prompted a creative art work entitled Cretaceous Cylinder Creature followed by two monster poems written by the entire group. Other art work included printing with round fruit and vegetables, round collages and art from bottle caps. At present the students are working on a large "junk" model of a castle also made with cardboard tubes and researching the Knights of the Round Table.
The children wrote stories about Round Families and listened to the book The Round House about a little English boy's adventures inside a giant English pillar box (mailbox).
A highlight of the project came a couple of weeks ago when the children planned a round tasting tea party. They made and decorated their own round table, served tea in round china cups from a round china teapot and sampled a range of round foods including salami, grapes, carrot rings and munchkins.
Another highlight will be the parent afternoon on Halloween day when they will share the extensions of their project with parents, entertain them and of course serve round refreshments including pumpkin cake!
1996 10-04-sc Our ships have come in!
The New School nautical explorers again took to the water last week to launch their homemade boats in the Raritan Bay behind the Spy House in Port Monmouth.
Building boats from milk-cartons (and other junk materials) has been a New School tradition since 1986. For a number of years the children at this ungraded elementary school have built boats from milk-cartons, starting with rafts and progressing to a large replica of the Santa Maria which was sailed on the Navesink one Columbus Day. Two years ago the students asked to build small boats. Working in groups of three (an older, a middle and a younger classer) the students built boats at school and later launched them in the Raritan Bay last Columbus Day creating a day of adventure and fun for parents and students.
This year the students again built small boats. Each group built a base of milk cartons for their boats. The students have been collecting and counting and graphing the number of milk cartons since the end of the last school year and divided the total evenly between the groups. When Boat Day arrived the boat builders were ready. Learning from past experience, it was decided to build the superstructures at the beach. Each group went armed with their plans and supplies augmenting their creations with beach flotsam and jettison.
Although built on the same basic milk-carton raft, each boat was very different. One sporting a cardboard head and long neck and tail was named Nessie -- The Loch Ness Monster Boat, another painted yellow with a large foam bill was simply called Duck. Some had "seats" or walls built on top of the base and others had shaped bows giving them a more traditional look. Names were as varied as the boat designs -- Bugglo, U.S.S. Drunken Toad, The Arrow, Sunshine, and Titanic (which was decorated on the outside with various shells, seaweed, sea glass, etc., and the name spelled out in craw claws!)
After a morning of building and a picnic lunch the launches took place -- 15 boats in all were soon on the bay afloat with teachers and parents wading waist deep to hold 20 foot tow ropes and prevent the boats floating away! Although there were boats that tipped or flipped, hardly anyone went home dry, none of the creations sank, and it was generally agreed to have been another successful Boat Day full of fun.
1996 10-01 8-MILE WALK TO RAISE MONEY FOR ST. MARK'S SOUP KITCHEN
For the past 24 years the students (ages 5 - 14) from The New School of Monmouth County have done an "8-Mile Walk" and asked people to sponsor them to raise money for needy causes in the local neighborhood. The walk started when The New School first located in Holmdel in 1972 and wanted to experience their own township first hand by walking the 8 miles from their location in the more eastern point via Holmdel Park to the western boundary near Colts Neck. Since then the walk has become an annual tradition and has raised money for cancer, local soup kitchens, marfan syndrome and Native American education. This year's money will go to support St. Mark's Soup Kitchen in Keansburg. New School students have been involved with this Soup Kitchen over the past 12 years.
This is the 4th "8-Mile Walk" for the Kitchen. Students have also made and sold lunches at school to raise money, had food drives for the Kitchen's pantry and prepared Thanksgiving baskets. Hands-on-involvement has included entertaining the Soup Kitchen clients with holiday musical programs while lunch is in progress. Some of the older students have also helped to prepare and serve meals.
The 8-Mile Walk left its Holmdel route when traffic became bad on Laurel Avenue preventing the students walking from the school and various other routes were tried. These included the boardwalk from Asbury Park to Belmar, Sandy Hook, Hartshorne Woods and last year the newly opened Henry Hudson Trail from Matawan to Atlantic Highlands. Although the trail turned out to be almost 10 miles long, it was a popular and safe route, so it was decided upon as a good route for this year, too.
Last year Soup Kitchen Director Tom Ruland met the New Schoolers for their lunch stop at McMahon Park. Since hearing about Tom's bout with cancer earlier this year students and teachers felt that they wanted to again support the kitchen (and Tom) by their walk. They are hopeful that Tom (who is undergoing chemotherapy) will feel well enough to join them for lunch again this year.
The choice of Columbus Day for the walk is not accidental. For the past five years the New School has forfeited the day as a holiday -- but as a positive protest against the hero-worship of this explorer, and they have spent Columbus Day trying to draw attention to needy causes.
(Call Susan Chilvers 908-787-7900 for additional information or walk directions.)
1996 09-20-sc Boat Day at The New School
The New School nautical explorers again take to the water next Friday (September 27th) to launch their homemade boats in the Raritan Bay.
Building boats from milk-cartons (and other junk materials) has been a New School tradition since 1986. For a number of years the children at this ungraded elementary school have built boats from milk-cartons, starting with rafts and progressing to a large replica of the Santa Maria which was sailed on the Navesink one Columbus Day. Two years ago the students asked to build small boats. Working in groups of three (an older, a middle and a younger classer) the students built boats at school and later launched them in the Raritan Bay last Columbus Day creating a day of adventure and fun for parents and students.
This year the students are again building small boats. This week each group built a base of milk cartons for their boats. The students have been collecting and counting and graphing the number of milk cartons since the end of the last school year. Next Friday they will build the superstructure of their boats on the beach and then launch them in the Bay behind the Spy House in Port Monmouth. Parents will be helping with his event.
Children attending the Summer Program currently in progress at The New School of Monmouth County have been very excited about their most recent session. The theme was Monsters". Brainstorming "Monsters" as a group they covered the whole gamut from goblins, ghouls, Frankensteins, mummies and other "haunted house" characters to dragons, underwater Leviathan, Greek Gorgons and Medusa. After the brainstorming the group decided on following up with art and drama on a few chosen topics. A huge dragon, a haunted house and a life-size mummy were the chosen "monster" project. Black fabric and huge twisted paper vines from floor to ceiling created the environment for the haunted house which had enormous cardboard props including a coffin, grave yard and scary characters. Paper mache, beads and various food-items such as beans, Jell-O, hard-boiled eggs and cold spaghetti were used to create a "feel in the dark" horrors experience for visitors brave enough to offer a hand!
A giant mummy was also created out of plaster bandage and was another interesting item to be viewed by parents when they were invited to see the culmination of the fun on the last day of the session.
But much of the work went on the making of a gigantic brightly colored dragon in reds and oranges with a huge painted head carved from foam. The body consisted of a piece of gauze, large enough to cover 5 or 6 children, with over 300 strips of red and orange fabric tied to the edges to drape down and form the sides. The strips were decorated with beads and glitter before being tied through slits in the gauze fabric. The final effect was a 10 foot dragon held aloft by its young creators whose movements gave a dramatic sway to the decadent monster (see enclosed pictures).
For the final session of The New School Summer Program the theme is "Machines" - a far cry from monsters or maybe not? The New School is an ungraded elementary school in Holmdel that starts its 27th school year this fall.
For further information or questions call Kathey Shoshin, 787-7900.
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