Specialist Program

In the Weaving Room, Alexandra, affectionately known as "Lasagna," teaches that every knot of tangled yarn is a puzzle, not a problem.
Weaving is a unique offering at Peninsula school. During the Activities period, students self-determine what project they want to start and see to completion. If a student is excited about doing a table loom or even a floor loom, they are required to master the seemingly simple block loom. The foundational skills of under-over, knotting and unknotting, and figuring out weavers' tangles are invaluable as they practice hand-eye coordination,  pattern recognition, and problem solving. This lays the groundwork for the day when they feel confident tackling Demeter–the largest floor loom with 420 warp ends and a complex 50+ line overdraft pattern.
My favorite part about this job is seeing how kids apply their own creativity to traditional looms. They are quick to push boundaries by experimenting with new techniques and designs. At first, kids are motivated to have a finished product, but as they get into the rhythm of weaving, they begin to fall in love with the process and creation itself. The joy of weaving is in each passing of the yarn, and so the minute a student successfully takes home a woven piece of cloth or beaded jewelry, they are back the next day, ready for more!

Lower School Music offers a unique take on the Activities Program at Peninsula. Each day offers a different agenda: sometimes, an hour consist of a mosaic-like structure of several collaborative activities. In this scenario, children will be gently teacher-guided while spending time playing instruments, engaging in movement, singing karaoke, and playing music games, to name a few.

At other times, Activities is led in a collaborative workshop style offering. This may be a time to learn and explore song-writing, conducting, or making DIY instruments. 

Music's subjective nature serves as an ideal medium to bring forth each child's different ideas, interests, emotions, and experiences, making Activities time truly child-led.

At the heart, Lower School Music is a place for strength-based learning and a safe space in which students challenge themselves to get outside their comfort zone.

Beginning in the K-1 classes, students begin to have Woodshop in small groups with their classmates. The idea behind this is that it is an opportunity for them to begin to feel comfortable in the Woodshop as they learn the basics of tool safety and very basic building methods. Later, when the students begin choosing to come to Woodshop for their afternoon Activities classes, they already have enough skills and knowledge to join a class that is of mixed ages and experience levels.

While in Activities classes, collaboration and skill sharing is encouraged. Experienced students often offer to help a newer or younger student with finding the right tool or a best practice method. Students also take full responsibility for their work, both in keeping track of all their parts and in putting away their tools and helping to keep the Woodshop in order. There is an enormous amount of pride in project completion and students are able to speak to the methods that they used in creating their work. Arts-based learning fosters confidence in students and this truly comes through in their process.

Science classes in the K-8 program are geared towards delivering foundational scientific concepts to our young learners. As such, a diverse repertoire of fields are covered, from astronomy to zoology. At Peninsula School, each of these elements are effectively offered in a rich context of cross-disciplinary, collaborative learning, taking advantage of all the resources our diverse teaching staff bring. Deep dives into science themes are complemented by explorations through field trips, writing, the arts, and other fields. This mosaic approach creates the richest and best remembered, even cherished experiences for students. You can read more about Lower School Science and Upper School Science on their program pages.

While the classroom Science Program is structured to deliver a planned but flexible curriculum to students in each class, Activities time offers a completely different approach and set of opportunities for engaging with the subject and each other. 

The majority of Science Activities are set up to be largely self-directed. This nudges each student to wrestle with deciding how they wish to spend their time, to delve into their own specific scientific interests, and to negotiate with other students from a wide age range on taking turns or working together. By navigating the social aspect of Activities while having choices and being creative with Science Room offerings, many magical moments ensue! Inspiration can come from exploring a new idea of their own, or from a eureka moment from another student. Where students gravitate, and how they hold themselves is greatly revealing of their character and enormously fun to facilitate.  

During the Activities Period, students have the freedom of choice. They are faced with a challenge of the complete open-ended project. They choose the methods of how to create; hand-building or using a wheel, (electric wheel or a kick wheel) to create whatever they decide to make. After finishing with their clay pieces, their pieces go to the kiln to be fired. While they wait for that 1 to 2 week period, they think of their choices of the glazes as there are many kinds of glazes; high fire or low fire glazes and all the colors they need to choose. Some students spend weeks finishing what they envision in their mind. 

Also at the Activities Period, students have an unexpected group of students each day. In this arrangement, they have the opportunity to talk with students in different age groups and this helps to improve their interpersonal skills and social skills.

Our morning curricula are designed to be both challenging and approachable for every student in the class. The overarching goals are introducing and developing mastery of skills, grasping of concepts and deepening understandings in age appropriate ways, using a myriad materials and methods with all age groups. Any given project/lesson might be mainly about skill building or idea building, or it might be designed for a finished product that is exceptional, or designed for no particular product but instead for practice. 

A given project might be valuable scaffolding for building the student’s visual vocabulary over time. We ask the students to consider how artists show how they feel? How artists express their ideas? How do WE, as artists, express our feelings and ideas? We begin this work in the early years and continue up through 8th grade. Along the way, we explore questions such as What is the role of art? How do we learn to question, and what questions can we ask through Art? We say "a picture speaks a thousand words," how is this possible? And how can I say a thousand words with a picture? By the Upper school, Students will deeply understand complex concepts, including ones as sophisticated as What is the difference between Art and Propaganda?

Afternoon Art Activities offers a creative space, open time, and open choices for artistic exploration, both physically and mentally. Students have time to integrate, process, and take ownership of the concepts and skills learned in morning Art class times. It is a time for true creative problem solving because students come with their own ambitious innovative ideas, and a self-determined goal of seeing them manifest. In the afternoons, multi-age peer-to-peer inspiration and teamwork are powerful drivers of innovation.

Class Library periods build on specific learning objectives and skills across the years. Class times are primarily structured around literature - from picture books to novels, there is a consistency of a shared group experience of listening to a story and engaging with the material. For our youngest students, themes include friendship, kindness, understanding our emotions, acceptance of others, and language patterns. As the children get older, these themes are built upon, and new themes are added including: diversity within families, stories inspired by real people, being part of a community, understanding justice and injustice, being an upstander, and more. As the grades progress and the books become longer and more complex, the classes delve into character studies, understand differences in genres, examine language, and broadly expand their skills as critical readers. Library and research skills are also part of the curriculum and involve (but are not limited to) learning where to find specific books in the library, how to use the Dewey Decimal System, how to use a research database to find appropriate articles, and how to read nonfiction sources critically.

During Activities for many children, the library can be a welcome, somewhat quieter pause in a very full day. It is a space they all know is available to them for self-care in the hard work of being a kid, and is an important piece in how at Peninsula we nurture the whole child. In Lower School Activities time the children have time to find a book, to peruse the shelves, and often will pour over books together. We always have a long story time, with stories varying daily, and we often end the Activities time with riddles. In Upper School Activities, students find their favorite books to read (and re-read!), and we have a shelf full of board games and word games, including Peninsula stand-bys Anagrams and Speed Scrabble, and weekly sessions set specifically for Magic the Gathering and Settlers of Catan.   

The Upper School Music Program is unique in that there is a set schedule for each student band to rehearse during lunch and Activities throughout the year, working towards the annual Rock Concert in the spring. Forming a band involves collaboration, interpersonal communication, and creative problem solving. Each of these key elements are naturally occurring side effects of the process of getting together with a group of colleagues and making music together.

Students go through a guided process of deciding who they will play in a band with, what instrument they will play, and what song(s) they would like to learn. These decisions are highly influenced by the preferences that students develop after going through the experience over the course of several years. Throughout the year, students hold themselves and each other accountable to be in the Band Room at their designated practice time. The adversity that comes with learning a new instrument and/or song while collaborating with their peers is invaluable to the process. As a group, each band readies themselves for the Rock Concert, and the work put into each practice, whether smooth or bumpy, becomes worth it. 

The interpersonal skills cultivated during the Upper School Music process are crucial to not only their success as a band, but as people going into the world after Peninsula.

Every class from Nursery to 8th grade meets for PE at least once a week. This weekly meeting time creates a unique opportunity for students to cultivate relationships with each other, while also successfully navigating the three domains of learning: Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor. If we look closer at those three domains, they all naturally make their way into a well-structured lesson. PE at Peninsula is structured in a way that really allows every domain of learning to be touched upon, all while the students think they are just “playing games.” The cognitive domain is accomplished through things like rules and strategies. The affective domain is accomplished through emotional processing and conflict resolution. Finally, the most obvious for PE, the psychomotor domain is accomplished through locomotor and non-locomotor movements paired with skill building.

PE Activities is offered five days a week to both upper and lower school students. In the PE activities program, students from different classes are asked to come to a consensus on which game they are going to play that day. Using this consensus model creates a ripple effect that allows for the compounding of core values that align with Peninsula School’s mission. With consensus comes student agency, patience, and community-building. What comes next is Play. This version of Play is different from free play, but still allows space for the students to create authentic interactions with their peers, while also exploring and navigating relationships. During PE activities time, students experience choice and all the responsibility that comes with it: their decisions may lead to positive outcomes or they may lead to learning experiences that create problem-solving opportunities.