High School Environmental Literature: Laurie Colwin

Grade Level: High School

Objective: To begin thinking about how one's eating habits reflects one's environment

“When I was alone, I lived on eggplant, the stove-top cook’s strongest ally.  I fried it and stewed it, and ate it crisp and sludgy, hot and cold.  It was cheap and filling and was delicious in all manner of strange combinations.  If any was left over I ate it cold the next day on bread.

Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures.  Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest.  People life to you when you ask what they eat when they are alone.  A salad, they tell you.  But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam."-Laurie Colwin, "Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant"

Writing prompt:

What do you eat when you are alone?  Why?

K's "Tuck Everlasting Paper"

Grade: 6

Objective: To spend time with a text, thoughtfully analyzing a central question

Why did Winnie Foster in the book “Tuck Everlasting” choose to die over live forever?

By K, Grade 6

Winnie lives a life of rules.  She can’t go beyond the radius of her own yard. She must sit up straight; she must not lick her fingers even when there smothered with syrup.   Then she meets the Tucks. They do not have any little rules like “sit up straight” or “no rolling around in the grass you’ll get your dress dirty.” They don’t care about little things like that--only the big picture. They had time to clean their house or other little chores whenever they wanted, they had more time than you could imagine—because they could live forever.  Toward the end of the book Winnie is confronted with a choice: she could choose to live forever and go with the Tucks.  All she would have to do is drink from the spring in the forest and it would be so.  In a conversation between Tuck and Winnie out boating in a pond, Tuck solemnly states: “Know what that is all around us Winnie?...Life. Moving, growing, changing, never the same two minutes together.” (Babbitt 61)  Winnie chooses not to drink the water and live forever because she did not want to be taken out of the circle of life, she wanted to cherish her life and not just have all the time in the world to do everything she wanted to do but fit them in and make them special. She wanted to live and die as a human being.

  Tuck Everlasting starts with a metaphor of a Ferris wheel turning slowly and then stops in its turning like the Tucks life whose Ferris wheel was turning but then suddenly it stopped.  Winnie started noticing the circle of life after that boat ride in the pond outside the Tucks little cottage—her life was still turning, slowly, but turning. The Tucks had stopped. Winnie decides not to drink the water because she does not want to stop in her turning.  She doesn't want to have to endure the pain of seeing the world go by without her. 

Calligraphy, story mapping, and "The View from Saturday"

Grade Level: 6

Taking their inspiration Noah, the story's first narrator, K. and A. chose to craft their The View from Saturday character map using calligraphy

We're about four chapters into E.L Konigsburg's novel The View from Saturday--and the 6th grade students have been really enjoying both the story and the activities we've been doing to engage with it.  Recently, they've made story maps using calligraphy pens (similar to the pen Noah learns how to use in the book's first chapter), had a reading tea party in the library loft, and responded to a writing prompt about a day they want to relive.

Blind contour drawings, charcoal sketches, and watercolor postcards

Grades: Elementary and Middle School

Objective: To practice line and paying attention to detail by experimenting with several different styles of still life drawings

M. takes her inspiration from the snow outside the library window

K sketches a Mason Jar full of oranges using charcoal

The Ancient Celts

Grade Level: 6

Objective: To learn about ancient civilizations through studying the Celts and sketching their living spaces

For our past two social studies classes, we've been working through Fiona Macdonald's wonderful book Step Into...The Celtic World,  a text I chose for its photographs, its illustrations, and its 15 step-by-step projects.  During our unit on Ancient India, K. and I enjoyed not only reading about India but also making timelines and charts, a paper mache Mughal-style helmet and a fabric prints, a set of prayer flags, chai, and naan.

This upcoming unit I hope to do some art and cooking, in addition to constructing a model of a Celtic-style round house.  Today, the sixth graders drew their own round-house diagrams in preparation for the project.

New students and winter walks

Physical Education: After the storm

Grade Level: Middle and High School
Objective: To exercise our bodies and observational skills by exploring the Ten Mile Trail after a windstorm.

Photos by Alex Meacham