Blue Sky School

(Us listening to Midia Presenting)   At Blue Sky School, we have the amazing privilege of inviting brilliant and passionate changemakers into our space to learn from. On September 19th, 2019 we once again were proven that Midia Shikh Hassan is no exception. I could go into giving you one description of who Midia is and what Midia does but I think this quote concludes it perfectly: “I don’t really define myself as one thing because I am the type of person that doesn't like to be doing only one thing at a time. I identify with a lot of things and a lot of communities” - Midia Shikh Hassan I think this sums up the type of person Midia really is. At Blue Sky, we like to joke that she is good at everything because in the past she has mentored us on the most random range of things that she seems to have expertise on. She discussed with us that day on our current Exploration (a topic to dive into for a 12 week period), community.  She talked about how she grew up in a ...

On Friday, October 4th, Blue Sky School went to Camp Woolsey to clean up for winter. We helped out Modern Niagara with whatever we could on this day. We spread mulch along the edge of the parking lot, we filled the potholes with gravel, stocked the woodsheds, moved canoes, and raked the beach. It doesn't sound like much, but I can assure you, our joints liked us significantly less after this.  Mulching: The mulching took much longer than we thought it would, the group of learners had to rake, shovel, and wheel around big chunks of the stuff. At first they thought it was a little pile that they could finish in an hour, with just a few rakes, and boy oh boy were they wrong. The pile had been compressed by rain, and was so dense that the progress was slow. When we finally finished it was so rewarding! Graveling: “We started with a giant gravel pile and as we filled potholes the pile gradually shrunk and it was heartening to see that because it was representative of the work we ...

On September 26th for Culinary Science (this is something we do every Thursday and Friday to learn about the science of food and to develop the skills to cook for ourselves), we learned about salt! The Cooking group made extremely good vegan and gluten-free scalloped potatoes , which we ate for community lunch (once a week we all gather together to eat a meal that a group has prepared for us.) The Science group looked at salt through microscopes and learned about salt molecules, the Science group also made ice-cream and learned about how salt lowers the freezing point of the water. “It was so fun AND informative!” - Grace Hill announces about the science workshop.