Teachers:
Stacy Kirby
Arin Cox

Weekly Newsletter

The Countryside School K-1 experience is often described as "magical." Visit the classroom and you may find yourself entering a completely different environment. The students may decide to transform their classroom into a rain forest complete with a giant Kapok tree suitable for climbing and pondering the secrets of the rainforests. A month later you may enter the inhospitable environment of space where you will find the K-1 students putting the finishing touches on their solar system model, manning the cockpit in preparation for launch or their "life-size" space shuttle, or making space-walk repairs on the space shuttle wearing their personal life support systems.

Students imagine, plan, and help to construct and paint these elaborate projects to immerse themselves in their unit of study. Additional benefits include teamwork, cooperation, and decorating skills. Perhaps the most important benefit the students gain from these science and social studies projects is a "can do" attitude that will lay the foundation for the rest of their education at Countryside. The students retain their imagination and excitement and learn to transform their dreams into reality as they mature and progress through their later years at Countryside. The scope and breadth of the ideas in the middle school science and invention fairs are readily apparent manifestations of the experiences and inspiration from their K-1 years.

Other social studies and science projects include a "life-size ship" (Ocean Unit), a European castle (World Cultures Unit), and a Great Pyramid (Egypt Unit). In addition, each year the K-1 students plan and implement a public service project where they eagerly use their talents to help others in need.

The children work in math and reading groups, according to achievement level, five days a week. P.E. and foreign language (Chinese or Spanish) are offered three times a week. When the children study a country or time period, all academic subjects are integrated with the study of that country or time period. For instance, while in ancient Egypt, the math groups measure pyramids, use the Egyptian number system (fortunately base 10!) and play ancient Egyptian games using a variety of math skills. During Reading/Writing Workshop time the children read many books about Egypt and write their own books about Egypt. The children also learn how to write using hieroglyphs!