FlexFriday

Cloud Elementary GPP students invited their middle school friends to come and play their first group Guided Passion Project: an original board game! “The Family Monster Teapot Forest Game” is an energetic voyage through a forest filled with perils, where the objective is to gather food before the monsters steal it from you. All elements of the game, including this fantastic board, were collaboratively designed by Cloud elementary students. Thank you so much to our middle school students for joining us to try it out!

On Friday, our Bronxville students traveled to Rye Nature Center for an afternoon of cleaning up litter and clearing out invasive plant species such as garlic mustard — a plant that is not harmful to humans but contains a chemical that kills the roots of native plants and quickly takes over the forest floor.

Cloud FlexFriday students began Women’s History Month by learning about the history of women on the Supreme Court. They explored the legal and constitutional challenges that faced women pursuing careers in law in the early United States and then followed a viewing of a documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a discussion of how they related to her challenges as a student.

Bronxville students visited the Museum of the City of New York to participate in a 90-minute program called “I Dream of NYC: 100 Years of New York Life through Art.” In this workshop, students explored how painters, fashion designers, and photographers have used their imaginations to create art inspired by NYC’s public destinations and private refuges. After viewing the exhibition, students created their own Faith Ringgold-inspired story quilts to document the destinations that make the city their own.

Author, speaker, and 2e student Jordan O’Kelley took Cloud FlexFriday students through his journey to early entrance at Cal State LA (where he is majoring in Physics with a minor in Mathematics) – emphasizing the importance of agency in the life of the 2e student’s academic path. Cloud students had an opportunity to ask Jordan all about his unique and winding educational road, and got practical advice from someone who has been where they are!

When circles become squares, flat becomes curved, and coffee cups become doughnuts, you know you’re in the weird mathematical world of topology. Sometimes called “rubber geometry,” topology is the study of properties of objects that don’t change even when those objects are twisted, stretched, shrunk, and bent. On a recent full-day field trip to the National Museum of Mathematics in Manhattan, our students played “Topological Tic-Tac-Toe” and enjoyed a guided exploration of the museum exhibits.

After a surprise postponement due to inclement weather last week, our program was rescheduled and Bronxville students were treated to a visit and presentation by a wildlife expert known as the Bird Lady! Students had the opportunity to get up close and personal with a number of birds and learn many facts about these beautiful creatures, from their diets to their native habitats and more. We saw many smiles from our Bronxville kids as these affectionate feathered friends perched companionably on students’ shoulders during the program.

Oxygen + fuel + ignition source = combustion! Scientists from the Don Harrington Discovery Center paid a virtual visit to the Cloud Campus on Friday to lead a lively exploration of the science of combustion. Students had a front-row seat for a variety of exciting experiments and demonstrations during this live virtual event.

Students from both the Berkeley Heights and Bronxville campus met at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum. In this exciting cross-campus event, students were able to explore the ship's fascinating exhibits. Students also participated in an educational workshop that focused on the Intrepid's role in the Vietnam War.

Students donned waders and set off into the water with collection nets at the Great Swamp Wildlife Refuge, in a continuation of this special FlexFriday series that began with a workshop in January. Students worked as a team to gather and identify the species they found and categorize them into pollution-tolerant, pollution-sensitive, and pollution-intolerant groups. Then they assessed their findings to determine what parameters might be affecting biodiversity and macroinvertebrate life. 

Berkeley Heights students gathered to greet a variety of scaly and slithery guests during a campus visit by the NJ Snake Man. Students had the opportunity to view and learn about all types of snakes and other reptiles. The program featured a unique feeding session and a lesson on how snakes are best handled.

Educators from the Great Swamp visited the Berkeley Heights campus to bring students a hands-on water quality testing program. With a demonstration using their Enviroscape three-dimensional model of a community, and a topographic model of the Great Swamp Watershed, students learned about the “real” water cycle. The presentation included discussions of what a watershed is, where our drinking water comes from, where our waste water goes, point versus nonpoint source pollution, human impacts on local waterways, and best practices to reduce our impact on local waterways. This visit will be followed up by a field trip in the Spring!

In an exuberant display of creativity, showmanship and humor, 16 performers wowed their families, peers and teachers with music, comedic skits and visual art at the Berkeley Heights FlexSchool Talent Show last Friday.

Meet Uno – a bald eagle who was rescued after being found, injured, emaciated and unable to hunt in Sitka, Alaska in 1989. FlexSchool students were treated to a “meet and greet” session with Uno, along with other awesome birds of prey, during a recent FlexFriday visit to the Raptor Trust.

FlexSchool students and staff donned chest waders and waded out into the Hudson River, dragging a 30-foot seine net to collect samples of various species of fish, crab, shrimp, jellyfish and more on a recent FlexFriday excursion to the Center for the Urban River (CURB) at Beczak.

At last week’s special multi-campus FlexFriday event, FlexSchool students crafted handmade messages of kindness and support, and attached the notes to warm blankets to be distributed to individuals experiencing homelessness. Then they were treated to a live Q&A with Mike and Nick Fiorito, founders of the charity Blankets of Hope. Students shared some of their own charitable endeavors and were able to get advice from the experts on how to take it to the next level.