Earth School For Schools
Earth School Workshops are designed for children of all ages, to explore the arts of being human, both indoors in schools, and outdoors in nature. The name "Earth School" comes from the
Native American understanding that the planet can be the best classroom, and nature the best teacher. Earth School is meant to foster respect for the planet and all its people, to engender trust, to learn teamwork, to develop self-confidence and a sense of knowing who one is...
For a complete brochure of Something Good in the World's Earth School programs offered at Hilltop Hanover Farm, please click here.
Native American Traditions
This live and theatrical experience is designed to introduce children to Native American belief systems and traditions in a real way, with a focus on the Northeast Woodland tribes. This one-hour presentation includes lots of story-telling, ceremonial theatre, dance and music, while discovering the significance of Native American practices. The ways in which the Native Americans used the trees, rocks, plants, and animals, as well as how they thought about them, will be brought alive through detection of artifacts. Feeling how the native people honored the Earth and made connection with all living things will lead to understanding why they thought of humans as being "Keepers of the Earth."
* This can also be conducted as a two-hour program outdoors, and/or as a follow-up field trip to the Hilltop Hanover Farm in Yorktown, NY, which includes hiking, games, story-telling, and ceremonial theatre.
Satisfies N.Y. State Social Studies Core CurriculumRequirements for Grades 2, 4, and 7.
Colonial Life
Colonial Life workshops help children to understand the impact of the European settlement on the Native American people, and explores the similarities of and differences between the Europeans and Native Americans through a comparison study of their belief systems and how these were reflected in their practical approaches to daily living. Through a variety of Colonial and Native American games, as well as theater exercises, this program focuses on the needs of survival, adaptation, teamwork, cooperation, and interdependence, both in terms of physical skills and behavioral attitudes, to demonstrate the contrast between a modern-day focus on concern for oneself, to a Colonial need to focus on the whole community. This program can be presented in two parts, with the second day including a live comparison of the two cultures through the experience of an early Colonial dance and a Native American Circle Dance.
Satisfies N.Y. State Social Studies Core Curriculum Requirements for Grade 7.
Taking A Position
"Taking a Position" teaches children how to approach a controversial topic from an impersonal research standpoint, to draw reference about the subject, and then to apply it personally to their own lives. Designed to promote tolerance, and to assist students in their decision-making abilities when confronted with difficult issues, this process starts with the collective creation of a list of "hot" topics that are often the source of argument. In small groups, children choose one subject to research that they feel they would like to have a "cooler" approach towards. This program requires two periods: one day for factual research, reasoning, and the development of a principled stance, and a second day to work through the sentiment one has about the subject, the initiative one might wish to take in relation to it, and finally, a chance to present the results to one's classmates. Students also work individually on creating lists of what they "will have" and what they "won't have" in their lives. In addition to promoting the skills of planning, writing, teamwork, and public speaking, this program includes memory exercises, mind-liveners, and team games that help to facilitate mental focus in the classroom.
Satisfies N.Y. State English Language Arts Core Curriculum Requirements for Grade 8
Home Schoolers
Earth School programs can be designed for and adapted to all ages and groupings of home-schooled children. In addition to the many listings in this brochure, there are also Theatre and Creative Arts classes that can be conducted both indoors and outdoors in nature, including journal and creative writing, sensory walks in the woods, juggling, improvisation, mime, theatre games, music, sensitivity training, detection arts, self-mask making, painting, drawing, collage, dance and movement, and much more. Meditative and reflective processes which are integral to these classes help to promote the ability to be one’s self inside of what one does, while having fun, finding out what one loves to do and doing a lot of it, discovering new creative talents and abilities, switching on the senses, and figuring out what it means to be human on the planet at this time. This theatre work is not performance-oriented, but is meant to offer a wide variety of practical ways and means to maintain a sense of self, through the development of one’s own beliefs and principles.
Museum Field Trips
For Ancient Egypt, a follow-up field trip can be arranged to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or for King Arthur to the Cloisters Museum. These experiences help to deepen some of the understandings explored in the presentations. Museum trips always include mind-liveners and detection exercises, live research, and searching for clues in small groups which can be shared together afterwards.
Sensory Awareness
This program takes place outdoors, and is designed for children of all ages to consciously activate each of the senses and make connections with nature in fun and simple ways. This experience includes hiking, getting to know the trees, plants, and rocks, along with team games and exercises to bring alive sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch.
"Water, Water Everywhere" and "Life on the Farm"
Programs conducted at the Hilltop Hanover Farm and Environmental center in Yorktown Heights, New York
Water, Water Everywhere
"Water, Water Everywhere" workshops include: hands-on, experiential and environment-based learning about water systems and water conservation, hiking and discovery of the stream and pond, studying the pond life, including scooping out and observing insects and other pond dwellers with magnifying glasses, as we identify them and understand their habitat. One-hour program includes a light hike. Designed for Pre-K through Grade Two.
Life on the Farm
"Life on the Farm" workshops can be created to meet the needs of any age group, and center around the themes of the origins of food, sustainable living practices, farm handicrafts, and working in harmony with the environment. Classes are completely hands-on, with experiential and sensory-based activities, which can include the following: harvesting organic vegetables and herbs from our farm gardens; wool crafts and weaving; compost and worms; chickens and wild birds; planting and seeds; bees and honey. One-hour program. Designed for Pre-K through Grade 12.
Costs and Timings
Earth School Workshops can take place in one hour, or courses can be developed for a series. Workshops and Presentations have been adapted for children and adults of all ages in both in-school and outdoor settings. One-hour presentations and workshops start at $125 per class of up to 25 children. Classes can be combined and presentations can be tailored to suit the needs of the curriculum. Support and funding for Earth School programs is available and may be applied for through the BOCES Arts In Education Services and the Westchester Arts Council.
Goal of Earth School
"The main goal of Earth School is to find the ways to help children reconnect with their natural genius, through the basic use of all their human faculties, while developing higher standards, principles, teamwork and a stronger sense of self. Workshops and courses are about switching on the senses, learning to trust the instinct, and re-engendering natural ways of being, so that qualities like respect, thankfulness, awe, and value are a natural response. This work is based on over 30 years of experience, with students of all ages and backgrounds, in which it's been discovered that most people learn best through hands-on experience, rather than only through books and words on paper. Earth School is dedicated to keeping alive the essential understandings and experiential knowledge that ancient and indigenous peoples all over the world have always sought to promote. Earth School seeks incorporate the best of all ways, practices and traditions that are productive and useful to humans and the planet."
Earth School programs offered in school classrooms
Mysterious Ancient Egypt
This one-hour presentation brings Egypt alive through theatre, art, music, and photography, so that children will have a real, hands-on experience of the mysteries of Ancient Egypt. The process includes a slide show of photographs taken in Egypt of famous sites and artifacts, accompanied by music composed on Ancient Egyptian instruments, originally created for the King Tutankhamun exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Children will also participate in the acting out of the mythological story of "The Weighing of the Hearts," with costumes, masks, and props. All kinds of mysteries will be wondered at, from the disappearance of Egyptian "hats," the shape of the Nile, and the "hidden art" in the mask of King Tutankhamun. Through the drawing of hieroglyphs, wearing of "crowns" and masks, and handling the crook, flail, and ankh in a living simulation of an Egyptian artifacts exhibit, 
children will experience Ancient Egypt, not just hear about it. For students and teachers who learn best by doing... find out what Ancient Egypt feels like!
Satisfies N.Y. State Social Studies Core Curriculum Requirements for Grades 3 and 6.
King Arthur Pendragon: The Truth Behind the Myth
This one-hour workshop starts from the premise that King Arthur Pendragon was a real person, living in the Dark Ages, and includes a slide show of sites associated with the legends and myths, accompanied by taped music of the early Renaissance played on original instruments; an introduction to life as it would have actually been during the Dark and Middle Ages; games to show how legends come about, based on truth; a look at the significance of names in folklore and fairy tales; an introduction to the idea of chivalry and how it arose full force following the times of King Arthur and carried well into the Renaissance; early Renaissance dances that all can participate in, to bring alive the atmosphere of the Knights and Ladies of the Court; the acting out of a sword ceremony for becoming a Knight; and plenty of time for questions and telling stories from the legends of King Arthur and the Knights and Ladies of the Round Table.
Satisfies N.Y. State Social Studies Core Curriculum for Grade 6.
Ancient Mysteries
Ancient Mysteries programs provide an overview of the many contrasting civilizations that are studied as part of the sixth grade Social Studies curriculum, stretching from Mesopotamia to the Middle Ages, and can be used as a culminating event for the year. Approached as a collective research, based on archaeological evidence, these workshops include a live comparison study of the differences and similarities between the belief systems of ancient cultures as reflected in their architecture, artifacts, artwork, music, and dance. 
Slides, video, recorded music, folk dance, and theatre are all used to bring alive the subject, with an emphasis on the "sacred sites" and cultures of Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, European and Celtic societies, touching also on the Americas.
Satisfies N.Y. State Social Studies Core Curriculum Requirements for Grade 6.
For information about Earth School, please contact Barbara Sarbin
Telephone: 914-217-9249• Fax: 914-737-8761