Scenes from the Week: 9/19–9/23

Morning Garden Transition making apple butter and painting red.

5th Grade painting of Buddha under the tree. Students learned about Prince Siddhartha and his transformation into The Enlightened One known as Buddha.

Little Friends enjoy their time outdoors growing more and more confident with one another and with passing by photographers. :-)

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Sunflower Kindergarteners make wooden swords in preparation for Michaelmas.

Grade Three prepares a birthday surprise for Mrs. Green.

In their final week of Chemistry and the culmination of the block, Grade 7 built a lime kiln. The experience builds on what students learned about the formation of limestone and marble in geology last year and introduces the lime cycle. By studying this process, they experience all that occurs as we decompose a salt (calcium carbonate in various forms) with intense heat. The kiln was fired and over a few days water was added to what remained to form new substances (carbon dioxide and quicklime), which are each an acid and base respectively. As they're recombined, calcium carbonate reappears. The class discussed some of the practical implications for this including plaster and mortar. The lime kiln brings together Grade 7 discussions of heat and water as catalysts for chemical reactions along with the basic understanding students have developed about acids and bases.

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Classes continued during the power outage on Monday morning. Thank you to everyone for your flexibility as the school navigated this unexpected Duquesne Light equipment failure impacting the neighborhood.

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Mr. Peaches, a neighborhood cat, found his way into the building briefly during the power outage and Miss Kim scooped him up, so he could be taken back home across the street.