We Spark Creativity
Independent schools champion the natural creativity in every child, growing creative problem solvers and nurturing artistic skills.
Independent schools champion the natural creativity in every child, growing creative problem solvers and nurturing artistic skills.
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Bright Future
At the start of the school year, representatives of Dominion Resources presented students in Hathaway Brown’s Campus and Community Sustainability class with a check for $3,800 to support the design and construction of a solar-powered charging station for laptops and cellphones. The goal of the grant, secured by Torrey McMillan ’90 and HB’s Center for […]
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Third Graders Make Sparks Fly for STEM Week
Third graders at The Hewitt School took on electrical inventions as their class project for Lower School STEM week in January; not only did their creations surprise their teachers and many of their visiting parent helpers, but everyone had a lot of fun in the process. The initial goal was to understand how a circuit […]
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Master Choral Class Brings School Communities Together
In early 2014, Ranney’s Lower and Middle School Chorus welcomed fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade choral students from a local public school to its campus for a 90-minute collaborative Master Chorale Class. Led by Ranney music teachers Lilly Torrente and Lisa Geene and Indian Hill School’s music director Meredith Thomas, the students shared warm-up and diction […]
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Stoneleigh-Burnham School Students Design City of the Future
Stoneleigh-Burnham School students are participating in the Future City Competition, a national, project-based learning experience where middle school students imagine, design, and build cities of the future. The theme is “Tomorrow’s Transit: Design A Way To Move People In And Around Your City.” Students team up to design a virtual city using SimCity™ software and […]
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Seeing Math in a Picasso
Second graders at All Saints’ Episcopal School recently donned their math goggles and engaged in a geometry exploration using the visual arts as a lens. Students learned about the Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and used his “The Reservoir, Horta de Ebro” (1909) as a springboard to exploring two- and three-dimensional shapes. Using shape templates, […]
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Kindergarteners are Architects Too!
At The Summit Preparatory School we encourage creativity in every moment. Our kindergarteners learn about 3D shapes and architecture, then implement their new knowledge into constructing their own marshmallow buildings. While the buildings may not necessarily be up to code and probably would not stand up to any natural disaster, our students do learn that […]
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Put on Your Math Goggles! Seeing Math in a Mondrian
Kindergarteners at All Saints’ Episcopal School recently donned their math goggles and engaged in a mathematics activity using the visual arts as a lens. The children learned about the Dutch abstract artist, Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), and used his “Composition” series as a springboard to discussing the similarities and differences between squares and rectangles. Students also […]
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STEAM Challenge with a Real World Application at Allen-Stevenson
Allen-Stevenson Middle School boys in grades 4 to 6 participated in the School’s second annual STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts and Math) Day on June 5, 2013. The challenge, one with real world applications, was for teams of four to design and build a wind turbine using a small inexpensive electric generator that would be […]
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TVS ANIMATRONICS at the World Maker Faire
by Luke Jacob, Dean of Learning and Curriculum with Dr. Ginger Alford, TVS Director of Computer Sciences and Strategic Project Director–Technology FWMSH Perhaps my favorite moment from World Maker Faire 2013, an event which took place on the grounds of the New York Hall of Science in Queens this September, came when my college roommate […]
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Freedom to Experience and Create
In an academically challenging girls school, the freedom to experience and create without fear of failure – or imperfection – is a hard lesson to teach. The environment encourages success, but success is often best learned through trial and error. Creativity relies on evolving rather than solving. Artist Robert Rauschenberg said it best, “Being correct […]
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LREI Students Cultivate Their Creative Confidence
Fostering creativity is a key element of the LREI experience and one that is at the center of how we structure learning opportunities for students. So we were intrigued to read about the current OpenIDEO challenge, “How might we inspire young people to cultivate their creative confidence?” OpenIDEO is an innovation platform that brings people […]
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Cardboard Challenge
Inspired by the story of Caine’s Arcade (see video on YouTube), our upper school students joined forces with businesses in the community to launch a “Day of Play” for our lower schoolers and other elementary aged children in the community. While the event was designed to appeal to lower schoolers, upper schoolers found leadership opportunities […]