Eighth Graders Build Engineering Skills and Prepare for Solar Car Race
Eighth grade students at Mount Madonna School are developing engineering skills in preparation for building their own solar cars to race at the 6th annual Summit for the Planet Walk-a-thon and Celebration on April 28.
The class began a three-week engineering unit involving experiments and activities designed to give them an intrinsic understanding of engineering basics, electricity, solar panel placement, circuitry, fluid dynamics, gear ratios, Newtonian mechanics, and experimental design.
In his third season as the volunteer coach for Mount Madonna School’s (MMS) middle school soccer program, parent Carson Kelly (Zoe, 9th, Indigo, 6th, and Cecily, 1st) remains committed to inspiring his young players to stay focused, play hard, and have fun!
Graceful arched bridges, a three-headed dragon, samurai warriors, a family of mice, taiko drums, and stories of children’s everyday lives all have a role in Mount Madonna School’s (MMS) annual Cultural Awareness Performance on March 30. This popular event – which showcases elementary students’ dramatic talents and creativity– is the culmination of several months of focused study on a particular world culture: this year, the island nation of Japan.
Into a tall, clear glass cylindrical container, about a third full with tap water and dishwashing detergent, Mount Madonna School (MMS) parent John Wagner using metal tongs drops a small chunk of dry ice. “We’re here to talk about things that are cold,” he tells the gathered third and fourth grade MMS students. Dry ice, Wagner says, is frozen carbon dioxide and has a temperature of 123 degrees below zero.
The Mount Madonna School Creative Writing Reading is an annual event where students, faculty, parents and friends gather together to listen to our student writers read. This year we will gather on Friday, March 8 at 7:00pm to listen to open letters, villanelles, short stories, sestinas, sonnets, monologues, first person narratives and other inspired forms of writing. 
