Wow! It has been a while since I wrote about what our students and teachers have been up to! Our spring happenings have been so many and so fun. So let’s take a brief break from all the new location and new teacher updates and walk you through what has been happening at our main campus this spring.
Science Fair
In early spring, we really got to work on our science fair projects. I hope I get a chance to write an entire post about my science fair reflections this year. But, just in case I don’t get to that, here are a few highlights.
We had a full house at the fire hall in Hickory, PA. My excitement overflowed when I realized how much we had grown. We had 41 projects completed this year! And we had families from outside of our immediate schoolhouse community join us, and some of them even walked away with awards!
The quality of the projects really increased since last year and I could not be more proud of these young scientists. I hope you will join us for the science fair next year!
Holidays
In the middle of February, we celebrated Valentine’s Day at the schoolhouse. Our room moms always do such a great job with our parties. It is so nice to be able to sit back and enjoy the day with the students. We played games, ate too much food, gave out Valentines and made some presents for our friend in the hospital.
You might wonder who is in the hospital? My co-teacher’s daughter was diagnosed of Leukemia this spring. You might have read about this experience on the schoolhouse blog post about the blessings of being in this amazing Christian community. The schoolhouse students made cards and a banner for her at the party. We continue to pray for her health and strength.
Field Trips
We had some great field trips this spring. We enjoyed a ranger-led hike in February at Raccoon Creek State Park. Our hike meandered through the different ecosystems in the wildflower reserves. It was a bit exhilarating as an educator to see the schoolhouse students answer all of the ranger’s questions about ecology with enthusiasm. I was one proud teacher!
We also had the chance to visit to a wonderful Washington County farm and greenhouse. One of our schoolhouse families owns and operates Bedner’s Greenhouse in Cecil, PA. I just cannot say enough good things about this business and the field trip they provided. We were able to explore the greenhouses, learn about a seeding machine, participate in a hands-on learning experience about unique plants and plant our very own succulents. They were even gracious enough to allow us to picnic by their beautiful pond and pavilion. It may have been one of my favorite field trips so far. It was the perfect field trip for our Botany unit. I highly recommend checking out their events schedule for family outings, group events and fun date nights!
We are looking forward to two more exciting field trips before the school year is out. We will be heading out on the Gateway Clipper in a little over a week to help us kick off our Water in our World science unit. Then our last field trip will be a history trip out to Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village.
Day-to-Day
I wish I could give each of you a personalized tour of our day-to-day life at the schoolhouse and share all the funny things the kids say. We have had such a good time while learning along the way. Here are some of my favorite memories from this spring.
Exciting Days Ahead
Spring also brought some pretty exciting days. At the end of our winter break in February, we opened up registration for new student applications. (Wait, you don’t take a February break? Trust me, everyone should take a February break! Tease: I will post the 2022-2023 schoolhouse calendar soon, but you can check out this year’s calendar here.)
At midnight on February 22, applications for our Camp Agape campus went live. I watched for a few minutes before going to bed to make sure there were not any technical difficulties. I thought for a moment some sort of cyber bot was filling out the applications!
(I have no idea if that is even possible, I am not really that tech-savvy!)
But nope, these were real people. In seven minutes, I had enough applications to completely fill our Camp Agape location. Within two days I knew I needed to close applications because we had so many. What a blessing and a challenge.
We have been working feverishly since then to get satellite locations up and running around the Pittsburgh metro area. We are out of physical room at Camp Agape and need more locations.
I am so excited that we will be able to start taking applications for our new North Campus on April 20th. Read about our new teacher here, our north location here and our Facebook “Meet the Teacher” event here. And we continue working to add even more campuses. I hope to have more details to share about that soon.
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