Academics

During World War II, the US government encouraged citizens on the home front to plant food gardens in whatever space they had available.  Food production at that time was stretched by feeding the military overseas; the gardening effort was intended both to ease the burden on food production and to help get citizens involved in the war effort.  

Peace activist and educator Dr. Emmanuel Ande Ivorgba, founder of the Creative Minds International Academy (CMIA) in Jos, Nigeria, will be a special guest at Mount Madonna School (MMS) on Monday, February 4.

Nine-year-olds Corey Mensinger and Ronan Lee each picked up the end of a short redwood log and carried it a few feet to where their classmates were arranging other logs and wood pieces into a large circle on the ground underneath the redwood canopy.

“Try to hold still,” urges a sophomore girl sitting across from a classmate, as she carefully wipes a Vaseline ribbon along her friend’s hairline, framing her face with a shiny outline. Next, she begins placing wet, pre-cut strips of a material resembling cloth bandages or mummy wrappings inside the shiny perimeter, across her friend’s forehead and around her eyes, nose and mouth.

MMS is once again sponsoring an environmental festival, Summit for the Planet, to be held on April 27, at the upper campus. The fair will include displays of all 6/7 grade science/engineering research projects. All students are required to participate with a project although their presence at the fair is optional but highly encouraged.

A glue stick in one hand, and a brightly-colored silk flower in the other, the dark-haired girl purses her lips in concentration and carefully applies glue to the flower bottom before placing it on the mask before her. The girl, a first grade student at Mount Madonna School, is working with her class on decorating skull masks as part of their Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) studies and celebration.