From 5th and 6th Grade Science teacher, Anneke Nordmark: In the first weeks of school, 5th graders visited Allens Creek, which borders Harley’s campus to the south, to make observations of terrestrial and aquatic habitats. We planned to study these types of habitats over a period of time and decided...
If you have ever walked into the Greenhouse in the Commons and thought to yourself, “Hey, this isn’t really that green”, then this post is for you! The seventh grade science classes are working this fall with their teacher, Carli Rivers, and our Commons educator, Ja’Daiza Johnson, to design, prototype,...
Meet the members of this trimester’s Food and Farm Lab class! This group of upper school students, along with Chris Hartman and Ja’Daiza Johnson, will be toiling happily in the Harley Organic Microfarm this fall to prepare the soil for autumn planting, tend the growing plants, and harvest the yield,...
You may recall that, back in October, the Primary C students helped Chris Hartman and his Farm and Community class plant acorns in the new Oak Tree Nursery. That blog post can be seen here. Now, after this year’s Oak Tree Ceremony, those same acorns are showing prodigious growth! Over...
At their spring in-service day, the Lower School teachers spent the afternoon in the basement spaces of the Commons. They were given the opportunity and time to create with the equipment provided, including the wood and power tools, CNC router machine, materials in the Project Space, and soil and seeds...
A beautiful garden of blooming delights welcomed back the students and faculty from their snowy and frozen February break. This is the 23rd annual flower show, courtesy of retired Middle School English teacher, Barbara Willard. The bulbs started in pots in Mrs. Willard’s barn, but were then transferred to the...
The Seventh Grade is tackling the problem of how to design a vertical hydroponic growing structure which maximizes access to nutrients (sunlight and liquid food), includes a system to deliver that food (solar-powered pump and plastic tubing), and takes up a limited amount of space. They are in the early...
There are two solar chimneys in the greenhouse. The idea of the chimneys is to use convection principles to circulate hot air from the greenhouse into the classrooms, so that we use the heating and cooling units less. The solar chimneys use passive heat, which means that we are saving...
Guest blog by Ja’Daiza Johnson, Commons Leader in Residence This year the Greenhouse appears much more tropical than usual. The 20 banana trees that now live on the Mezzanine balcony are the reason! The trees are all different shapes and sizes, ranging from babies just sprouting through the soil up...
Peter Hentschke’s Environmental Science class has begun growing algae. This algae not only will serve to sequester CO2, but it will eventually be used as a biofuel. The first step in this process is to determine the best factors for growing the largest quantity of algae. To determine this, the...
