Kindergarten Builds Gingerbread Traps

Nueva Stories

Every now and then we post interesting stories about Nueva and its Alums. If you have one, please email it to Matt.

This story comes from Lynne Greene: During the summer after our daughter's freshmen year in high school, she was still best friends with her lifelong Nueva friends. She invited her three best friends from Nueva to visit us on vacation. Each girl got off the plane with something creative and new to share with the others; a silk screening kit, a bag of recycled material from SCRAP in SF, and a sewing machine.

The four girls spent the week learning skills that none had ever tried before. They laid out the fabric, silk screened their own designs to create new fabric, figured out how to make an original pattern for clothing they designed themselves (yes, applied math was fully discussed), and then taught themselves to sew their own clothes. They were, and still are, simply amazing, talented can-do and will-do creative kids. Typically Nuevan!

As icing on the experiential cake, they sang in four part harmony while working together. They called a local restaurant that had an open mic night and asked if they could perform. They were told no, but decided to arrive in their new clothing and ask again. When they came up to the stage, the audience was clearly viewing them as young teens who had no business interrupting their evening entertainment. By the end of the first song, there was a hush over the crowd. They were awestruck at their talent and maturity. They sang several songs and left the stage to wild applause. The owner of the restaurant asked them to return again.

It is in juxtaposition to our next group of visiting friends that the Nueva influence on these girls was so clearly shown. A few weeks later, two new high school friends came to stay with us. As they came down the airport corridor to meet us, they were already plugged in to their iPods and texting on their cell phones. When asked about what to do during their stay, they wanted to go rent a video. They were both smart, nice girls, but the spark and gusto and creative life-force of the Nueva group was nowhere to be found.

Nueva Stories

Kindergarten Builds Gingerbread Traps

Written by Kim Saxe

Emergent Curriculum

Kindergarten teachers Heather Anderson and Laraine Ray brought their classes into the Innovation Lab to design and build traps to catch their missing cookies..

“From previous years, we know the Kindergartners always think of catching the gingerbread men with traps, so let’s be ready for them!” Both Laraine and Heather were vigilant and soon after the students hit upon the idea of making traps, the teachers whisked their classes up to the Innovation Lab for a Design Thinking session.

First, we had the students briefly consider what gingerbread people might need. (This was a very early introduction to the concept of users having needs.) We then had the Kindergartners ponder whether constructing a trap that met one or more of these needs might be especially effective.

Using small whiteboards and markers, the Kindergartners began drawing ideas for their traps spontaneously and effortlessly.

“Can we build them?” became a chorus, and we were off to the prototyping phase of the project. With the assistance of a bevy of parents, the Kindergartners chose materials and easily built their prototypes.
As the students proudly carried their prototypes down to their classrooms, one child confidently said to another, “Don’t worry; if it doesn’t work, we can always just redesign our prototype!”

Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Nueva School is a nationally recognized independent school serving gifted students and emphasizing integrated studies, creative arts, and social-emotional learning. For more than 40 years, Nueva has remained committed to its original vision: to inspire a passion for lifelong learning, foster social and emotional acuity, and develop a child's imaginative mind. Nueva creates a dynamic educational model to enable gifted children to learn how to make choices that will benefit the world.