Get to know a grad!

Abigail Trajtenberg loves to incorporate art and science into her teaching. In this audio snapshot, we have the pleasure of hearing Abigail read a couple of pages from a book she wrote about different learning styles. Check back again later this week for photos of her book.

Time to Play with Your Food!

This past week, artist Michiko Olson joined us at IslandWood to teach about Japanese history, art, and food in the most engaging ways! Grads and 6^th graders alike learned how to act in the Kabuki theater style, how to express ourselves through food by making “our world” in a bento box, and about how nature heavily influences Japanese culture.

On Monday night, the grads gathered for a professional development session with Michiko. The highlight of the night was certainly creating art with fresh veggies and rice. We were eager to show off our creations but even more eager to eat them!

When our students joined in the fun, they loved designing and painting their own Kabuki masks (on paper, of course!) and acting as merchants and samurais (with swords!). Like the grads, making art with their food was the crowning jewel of their experience! Enjoy these pictures from a great week with Michiko.

Michiko teaching us how to write in Japanese

 Decorating our Kabuki masks

Food + art = awesome

 Abigail's rice creation

 Success!

 Time for the kids to try

 Having fun

 Beautiful food art

 Cute little rice mouse

 Dancing Kabuki style

The Grads' IslandWood Science Fair

This week, as our winter classes come to a close, we pause to celebrate. The other night, we shared our natural history projects in good old science fair format, teaching each other about the various topics we have become experts on since the early fall. In October, we all identified our own area of study based on personal interests. From then, with the support of our teachers Greg and Stan, we researched, conducted field investigations, analyzed, and concluded. It was true joy to celebrate with each other the work we have done and, more importantly, the knowledge and skills we have gained. But don’t just take this blogger’s word for it…here is what our dedicated teachers had to say!

Greg said: “Last year when I was tasked with creating a new assignment for this course I simply wanted to create space for our graduate students to deeply explore a topic of their choice as it relates to the IslandWood landscape in a way that utilizes the scholarship of the scientific community and the experiences that come with studying nature outside.  The quality of work that was generated this year was exceptional.  Visiting with all of my students and hearing good stories during the ‘science fair’ has been a highlight of my year.”

Stan added: “This is what inquiry-based science is all about. The quality of the group’s diverse research questions, the creative processes that went into answering those questions through research design and the collection of pertinent data, and the interpretation of the results, in short, blew me away.  

The collective results of this effort and the contributions to future curricula, place-based content or just some fun teachable moments on the trail, will be felt at IslandWood for a long time.

In my mind, there are few things more rewarding than nurturing the ability to come up with a good solid research question, and answering that question through diligent fieldwork. Hats off to the entire class!”

Kudos to all of the grads on a job well done! 

 Ted teaches Stan about collecting the sounds of the landscape

 Michael stands proudly in front of his project about the history of fires at IslandWood

 Selena teaches Greg about invasive plants in IslandWood wild zones

 Catie displays her findings about tracking IslandWood's mammals

 Cohort D teaches Cohort C all about their projects

 Eboni teaches Yi-Chuan about nurse logs and stumps

Lily shows off her study of forest fungi