Art & Science projects, book and space discussions, learning about our solar system, a possible October overnight family field trip to the Goldendale Observatory, a literature circle reading of The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System (Joanna Cole & Bruce Degen) will all be part of our Space Study as we engage our young learners in lessons, projects and experiences, including
megaliths, e.g. Stonehenge, and their possible astronomical uses
a planetarium-building project
the science & art of the aurora borealis
weekly learning journal entries
Sprouting Seeds -
Fall 2023 Unit Study
Our first unit study for the 2023~2024 school year is Space. In addition to the art, science, history, and absolute wonder of Space that will be explored in this study, the following excerpt adapted from a Los Angeles Times newspaper article titled, Space Artistry, profiling the work of cosmos artist, Jon Lomberg, provides a little backdrop for our upcoming thoughtful discussions about “the cosmic perspective” (Carl Sagan) and our universe:
“It's the idea that we exist on the galactic level and on the atomic level at the same time, Lomberg explained. “That everything we do, every action we take, reverberates in both directions...we exist so briefly in time and we’re so small in space, and it’s really easy to feel that we don’t matter. One of the messages that the cosmic perspective offers is that we do matter, because every scale is important.”
Chris Hadfield talks about some images from his book.
Winter 2023/24 Unit Study
Peleaku Gardens Peace Sanctuary is a botanical garden overlooking the sea in Captain Cook, not far from where Lomberg lives on the Big Island of Hawaii. He chose it as the site for the first Galaxy Garden, a topiary recreation of the Milky Way. The garden measures 100 feet across, with each foot corresponding to 1,000 light-years (or nearly 5.9 trillion miles). His two-dimensional Smithsonian mural can’t convey scale. He wanted to make something that let people feel that vastness, without becoming intimated by it. The spiraling hedges are planted with gold dust croton, a leafy green plant dotted with yellow. Each yellow speckle represents 100,000 stars. Peppering the hedges are plants that signify different astronomical phenomena. Hibiscus flowers are large nebulae, for instance, while white vincas flowers are small ones. At the garden’s heart sits a fountain of black volcanic rock: a stand-in for Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.
On the Big Island, volcanic rock pebbles crunched underfoot as Lomberg wandered down a curving hedgerow marked “Orion arm” to a leaf adorned with a plastic jewel that represents our solar system. Virtually everything we know about the universe can fit, metaphorically speaking, in that single dot on a leaf. There is so much more to explore.
“There’s something very visceral about it,” said UCLA astrophysicist Andrea Ghez (awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2020 for the discovery of the Sagittarius A* black hole) who visited the Galaxy Garden in 2009. It brings it back to the human scale, and somehow that affects a different part of your brain or your understanding of things,” she said. “Even as a scientist, it was really somehow very profound to see it depicted in that way.”
—Space Artistry by Corrinne Purtill, Los Angeles Times
Woven into our lessons and experiences will be the continuous strands of our place in the universe, images from the James Webb telescope, and a deeper understanding of our unique and miraculous planet Earth:
Through astronaut photography, not just mine but the millions of images archived by NASA and the untold number yet to come, all of us can be explorers, continuing to poke into the world’s hidden corners and turn over its mysteries. There are still plenty of those: most of the Earth has been mapped but, to many of us, it remains largely unknown, though it’s the only home we will ever have.
You are here—we all are—for life. Let’s get to know the place a little better.
— You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes - Photographs from the International Space Station - by Chris Hadfield
Our Curriculum Framework
Our Winter Quarter Study encompasses The Arctic & Antarctica and will focus on bringing to life the geographical, historical, and contemporary world of our polar regions. Beth Mercier who leads polar expeditions will be a guest speaker during this study. Our Spring Quarter Study is The Revolutionary War & the History of America, and this will be an exciting time travel adventure as we explore the beginnings of American Democracy. Every year we find ourselves completely immersed in our "chosen by voting process" integrated unit studies, involved in a full year of teaching and learning together.
Our curriculum framework for each study is developed by unit study planning teams alongside our larger school community, and is a coordination of parent and teacher planning supported by quality fiction and nonfiction literature, internet resources, guest speakers and field trips. Throughout each study we adjust projects, lessons, journal writing, readings and concepts to the age, cognitive strengths and interests of our students.
Our Sprouting Seeds schedule differs from the public school schedule in that we start toward the end of September, take a month-long Winter Break from early December to early January, a two week Spring Break, and end our year in early June. During these “off- times” our students attend their public schools full-time. RCW 28A.225.010 allows our students to have an excused absence both afternoons from their public school classrooms and still remain full-time 1 FTE students so that the district continues to receive full funding for them. Historically, our public school students have managed both of their school worlds in wonderful ways. Parents of these children are incredibly supportive and appreciative of both school environments and have collaborated with teachers to monitor their children’s educational growth.
