Snow

The last few weeks have been trying to even the most avid snow lover. In between snow days the Nesters have continued to work on their projects. We have had a few more projects shared and once again the range of topics is amazing. In the past few weeks Nesters have completed projects on The 39 Clues book series, chem trails, and mummies! I hope this will be a full week of school with plenty of opportunity for the Nesters to make progress on their terrific projects and do some creative group activities. We will see if the weather cooperates! Also, keep an eye out for FN progress reports that will be coming in the kids report cards.

2011

Happy New Year. We are welcoming a few new students to the Nest this month. I love to see our group expand and absorb new people and ideas. The Nesters are remarkably open and supporative of each other. We will continue to do group activities on Wednesdays and individual projects the other schedule periods. The Falcon's Nest kicked off the new year by watching a terrific video of eleven year old Birke Baehr presenting his research on our food system. This video is part of the TED speakers series http://www.ted.com/. If you get a chance to check it out I think you will be impressed with Birke and the many other speakers. I wanted the Nesters to see the video and discuss Birke's remarkable presentation skills. He demonstrated a mastery of both his subject matter and presentation. As I told the Nesters I have great confidence in each of their abilities to research, organize and present their work just as effectively as Birke did. The possibilites for 2011 are endless!

At Any Given Moment in the Nest

Last week we had visitors from another school district who came to observe Nest. Often we have folks from other schools come to see what we do here in the Nest because they are interested in starting a program in their own school. They were impressed with the kids and surprised to see how varied the Nesters projects are. Each student is working on a project they are passionate about therefore the diversity of the Nester's work can be quite remarkable.

Right now if you were to visit you would see students...

Building a human form out of recycled materials
Making slide shows about pets, Venice, The 39 Steps book series, and Free Energy
Sculpting models of pandas, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa
Studying Benjamin Franklin, and Egyptian pyramids
Making a game of measuring and comparing the weights of common classroom items
Starting a fundraiser for animal protection organizations.
Making posters about big cats, and Shaquille Oneal

Illustrating the Edgar Allen Poe story "The Fall of the House of Usher"

Learning American Sign Language and making a video of themselves using ASL

Hard at Work

Here is Paul building model of a Hindu temple.