Open Classroom

HEATHCOTE HOMESCHOOL OPEN CLASSROOM

TEACHERSPEAK:

Our little group is part class, part club. We’ve been compared to freeschools, democratic schools and to unschooling. While we explore themes through play and study, we also work on group skills, such as consensus decision making, conflict resolution and collective responsibility. We use kid versions of tools adult Heathcoters are learning, such as checkins, ZEGG Forum and Non-Violent Communication.

We explore every part of Heathcote’s 112 acres, year round. The woods, gardens, stream and pond are classrooms. Themes, such as “Dragons & Fairies,” “Native Americans,” Videography & Puppetry,” etc., come from the kids’ and adult facilitators’ interests, and last as long as the momentum does. We experience themes through play and researching questions, with academics-reading, writing, math, geography, etc.–folded in contextually.

STAFF & ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Wren Tuatha is Heathcote’s Open Classroom Coordinator and Artist-in-Residence. She’s worked with kids, infants through teens, for over 25 years. She team-taught mixed age groups at University of Louisville’s Child Care Center, supervising nursing, psychology and education students.

She worked with at-risk children and families at Louisville’s Home of the Innocents and as a welfare caseworker for the State of Kentucky. She’s served 3 Unitarian-Universalist congregations as Director of Religious Education.

Wren studied education at University of Louisville and film at Towson University.

Heathcote member Gloria Brooks is this year’s Open Classroom intern. She lives at Polaris with her dog, Rochelle. She’s responsible for researching topics and designing activities. Her goal is to learn alternative teaching methods she can apply to homeschool programs she creates herself, especially around ecology, science and math.

Heathcoter Betsy  pitches in to mentor kids in gardening, and others in the community offer their interests.

Wren works closely with Open Classrooom parents Juji Woodring, Carol Seddon, Greg Newswanger and Paul Phillips to plan program schedules, themes, field trips, budget, outreach and overall philosophy. Thanks to these charter families, we’re able to invite other homeschoolers to our amazing sanctuary where children can connect with the natural world and each other in a spirit of peace!

We welcome Larissa Stewart, Mike Graff and their two kids to our program this year!

OPEN CLASSROOM TIMES

TUES, THURS  10:30-4:30, October through May

(days and times subject to change)

21300 HEATHCOTE ROAD

FREELAND, MD 21053

Contact Wren for details!

KIDSPEAK:

We’re homeschooled. We’re preschoolers and elementary aged.

Open Classroom is 3 times a week. We can come 1, 2 or 3 days. We have talking stick checkins. We talk. we don’t talk. We listen to the speaker. Mostly.

We consense on our day’s agenda. The teachers bring some activities and we also bring ideas. We get most things done.

We plan puppet shows and videos. We get ideas from each other. We get big ideas. We make them doable. We write. We rehearse. We perform!

We have feelings. We argue. We say what we want. We look at dominoes and mirrors in the group. We work it out or we get over it. Mostly.

We explore our woods. We have many “tree rooms” where we have picnics or meetings or hide. When the weather is warm we get in the stream and never dry off. We found thousands of frog eggs near our playground and watched them all spring.

We’ve “adopted” our stream. Now we have to clean it 4 times a year and survey it. Want to help? We loved the speaker who came to explain it. We’re in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.

We made birds’ nests. Once we made a pretty good igloo. We sent a quilt we made to the John Denver Peace Quilt. Now people everywhere see it!

We make up themes like “Dragons & Fairies” or “Gemstones” and we study them but it mostly feels like play. We keep notebooks and read to each other and send each other mail.

Now we’re going to start blogging! We made up online identities and the people we want to read our blogs will get a password.

We hike and play with the dogs and goats who live on our land. They think we’re one big herd. We notice how different species communicate ideas like love.

We take turns picking the snack and the chooser is the dishwasher. Everybody else rotates cleanup chores. We’ve gotten so good at it that now the grownups want us to help at dinner cleanup, too. We didn’t see that coming!

we construct our own board games and jigsaw puzzles. We learn about first drafts and second drafts.

We went to the National Aquarium and saw the dolphin show. We’re still discussing whether dolphins should be in shows, but it was a blast! We also loved Mazequest. We make our own mazes all the time and there is a labyrinth in one of the secret tree rooms in our woods.

We visit our neighbors. One has a bamboo forest on her land. Another has donkeys. Our favorite neighbor has a swing playground in his yard, hidden in the woods. He even has swings inside his house. He gives us applesauce from his orchard. We still have lots left over, if you want some. We’re still busy swinging.

Beavers just moved onto our stream! And by February the fantail pussywillows will bloom! Plus, we’re growing a treehouse out of willows that we’ll help to grow together as they get bigger.

The grownups at Heathcote have meetings all the time to work on how to get along. Open Classroom is our meeting where we do that. We’re The Tribe, The Herd, our own community and we are culture-builders!!!