Special Programs
Life at Red Cedar involves a wide mix of opportunities: academic, social, physical, artistic, inside, outside, in nature, in the local community and far from home. Special programs augment classroom learning and ensure a balanced experience.
A strong environmental program involves students in a range of activities that foster a love of nature and an informed awareness of the environment.
Students help to build and maintain an outdoor classroom space on the school’s land. They have participated in the building of a small barn, cob oven, shed to cover the oven, a yurt, and a stove to heat the yurt. The outdoor classroom is used for a wide range of activities including workshops, class projects and play.
Wednesday afternoons are set aside for workshops in the visual and performing arts, outdoor adventure, crafts, and other hands-on ventures.
Multi-day backpacking and snowshoeing wilderness trips are undertaken with the older groups each year.
In the winter, the entire school skis each Wednesday afternoon, with a choice of alpine or Nordic skiing, or snowboarding.
We undertake cultural trips out of the area in connection with our social studies focus each year. Trips have included Plimoth Plantation, Sturbridge Village and Boston, MA; Montreal and Toronto, Canada; Acadia National Park, New York City and Washington D.C.
For a week during mud-season each year we turn every classroom into an art studio and dive into Arts Immersion Week. Students choose week-long morning and afternoon art workshops. Recent Arts Week offerings have included set-design (we typically do a performance of one-act plays in the week following Arts Week), pottery, the art of South American cooking (each year a different culture is offered; previous offerings have included Greek and Italian cooking), African drumming, pack-basket weaving, mural painting, chair building and carving, and trumpet.
