Our Stories

Students’ Sadnah projects are often cross curricular, and connect to work they are doing in other areas. In Grade 1, for example, each class is learning about a waterway in DC. In Sadnah, students used the design thinking process to design bridges for their respective waterway based on its constraints and necessities. Each class made four bridges, with students working in small groups. Students are also learning about the various flora and fauna that can be found in and around their waterways. In their General Studies classes, they are drawing models of a chosen flora or fauna, and then sculpting them in the Sadnah. These projects will be on display at the Grade 1 Chagigat HaLomedim, or celebration of learning.

In Kindergarten, students are creating “comfort cases” to use in their class “nooks” or “quiet areas” when they are taking breaks. In Sadnah, students are making some materials for their comfort cases such as mazes and games. 

Kindergarteners are also completing an ongoing fall unit on kindness, which will be the focus of their Chagigat HaLomedim. Each class is working on a different kindness-related project, and using their time in the Sadnah to create a component for it. One class, for example, is making tzedakah boxes, while another is making vases to hold flowers they are designing for the nurse’s office.

When they’re not doing project work, students are learning skills such as relief work (or sculptures attached to a flat surface), weaving, and color theory.  Grade 1 students, for example, are using tiles and other objects to create impressions in clay. In their ventures into weaving, Kindergarten students are working on bowls and cups. Some will even incorporate weaving into their tzedakah box projects, creating woven slits at the top to insert money into, where it will be saved and donated to charity.

Kindergarteners also learned about color theory at the start of the year. Each student was assigned a secondary color; purple, green, or orange. Students learned about the “component” colors that make up each of these: blue and yellow for green, red and blue for purple, or red and yellow for orange. They then used Sadnah materials to decorate skewers, ribbon spools, or corks with their assigned colors and component colors. In the end, they put their items together into larger shapes and viewed them all in a gallery walk.

Pre-K studied color theory by using clay to learn how to mix colors. According to Rachel, this is largely a way for students to work on their fine motor skills. They combine colors in different ways, including “pancakes” where they squish together a stack of flat circles, and “snakes,” where they twist together two strands. Students also used their color blending skills in their overarching class unit on identity, where they created self portraits and mixed colors together to match their individual skin and eye tones.

Rachel says she wants students to learn that art can be collaborative, and that it can be expansive while also involving constraint. “Students need to be able to decide who takes projects home—it’s not just ‘mine, mine, mine.’ That’s important to learn for young children, but also for all of us. They also learn that all materials can’t do everything, and that they can’t use some of the materials that they see because they’re for a different class. That’s a big deal for them,” she says.

Rachel also wants students to feel like they are capable of making things with the materials of the world around them—which is why she uses so many recycled materials. “I want them to notice things around them, and look at the physical world, and imbue it with the creative spirit,” she says. “I want them to see that they are part of the creative process of the world, and that they have so many materials at their disposal. They can see the potential in everyday things, and then take them and make something new.”