Cardigan Mountain School

 

While we aren’t exactly sure to whom we should give credit for this, we couldn’t have scripted better autumn “ambiance” for a fall Homecoming Weekend if we’d tried—with the warm(!) and brilliant sunshine, the cloudless blue skies, the ubiquitous CMS green-and-white flags and banners, and those unique foliage colors just beginning to reveal themselves.

 

Occupants of The Point on Friday and Saturday comprised all kinds of Cougar constituents: students, faculty, and staff; alumni (young and “experienced”); a significant number of hard-working Cardigan trustees; a large group of prospective families exploring the School for the first time; current parents, grandparents, and students’ siblings; and a significant number of other special Cardigan “friends.” And, of course, our rivals from Eaglebrook and their own enthusiastic spectators added to the spirited atmosphere as well, in a fun and friendly way.

This year’s seventh-grade science classes, now taught by Mrs. Oliver, will continue to focus on the nurturing of small living creatures in their natural habitats—a “living laboratory,” if you will—as one of the many facets of the course. This component of their science curriculum, initiated last year by Science Department Chair David Auerbach, thanks to a grant received from ING which funded the purchase of 15 terrariums, entails the students’ pairing up (or, in a few cases, grouping together as three) to tend to a particular terrarium and the “being(s)” therein.

 

Using the practice of dissection to learn about living things at the seventh-grade level is not a productive use of the students’ time, opined Mr. Auerbach when he first came up with the “living laboratory” idea. And while Cardigan ninth graders taking high school–level biology will likely continue to find themselves with scalpels in hand (and more age appropriately so), seventh graders will instead learn about life from both observing and caring for living things.