Students celebrated Earth Day on Friday, April 24th. The school was a whirlwind of activity. Many of the children spent a large portion of the day outside. Tasks included picking up litter on the road, cleaning up a dump site in the woods, composting gardens, turning beds, planting a border and window boxes, and putting seed balls into the raw dirt around the new building. The juniors performed two plays, one of which had an ecological theme. The other was a Chilean folk tale. Older students made posters detailing the effects of global warming. The annual Earth Day snack, strawberry shortcake with whipped cream, was served outside.
Friday was a beautiful day – here is the new building.
The school assembled in the morning to see the junior plays.
First up was The Great Kapok Tree, by the second year juniors. They demonstrated their growing grasp of Spanish by delivering lines in both that language and English. The play was about a man who comes to cut down a large Kapok tree in the rain forest. He falls asleep, and the animals of the forest gather to tell him why he should spare the tree. When he wakes up, the man decides not to cut down the Kapok tree.
Both classes sang several songs together.
The first year juniors then performed “Delgadina,” a folk tale from Chile about a girl who is kind to a snake and is then gifted with the ability to shake gold from her fingertips. The king hears of this and wants to marry her, but he first has to endure a false bride, “the bony daughter.”
Delgadina is kidnapped by the wicked old woman, the bony daughter’s mother, and spirited away in a golden carriage.
The false bride informs the disappointed king “Now that I’m married, all of my magic is gone!”
The grand finale