Hamden Hall/Mystic Seaport Partnership Culminates with Festival

A year-long pilot partnership between Hamden Hall Country Day School and Mystic Seaport culminates this week with a student-organized festival featuring music, crafts and games that boast an underlying theme of lessons learned over the past school year.

Hamden Hall partnered with Mystic at the start of the 2012-2013 school year to provide dynamic programming both in the classroom and on site at the popular state maritime attraction. Throughout the school year, Hamden Hall’s fourth- and fifth-graders have enjoyed interactive monthly activities.

On Friday the culminating festival will allow students to showcase what they’ve learned, from scrimshaw to navigation to whale products and artifacts and more. On hand for the event, which starts at noon, will be parents, Lower School students, Mystic educators and Mystic President Steve White.

“The students are researching their assigned topics and will become experts and be able to talk about their topic to guests at the festival,” said fourth-grade teacher Emily Schimelman, who worked in conjunction last summer with fifth-grade teacher Lisa Collins on an engaging curriculum for their students.

Schimelman said that because the Mystic partnership and year-long activities have been project-based and hands-on, the culminating festival has been designed to incorporate the same feel.

Students will display their knowledge wares via booth – a chantey radio station, a whale blubber science booth, rope knotting and sailor bracelet-making, to name a few.

Fourth-graders are also creating two carnival games. “Go Fish But Really Go Whale” will challenge students to “catch” a whale using a rod, rope, and magnet. Each whale will bear a whale fact as researched by students. A whaling puppet show is also on tap as students wrote a short skit about a whaling voyage.

“This festival is a visual and experiential representation of the curriculum we designed with Mystic Seaport,” said Lower School Director Andrew Niblock. “Students have worked for the past month on putting themes from the school year into booth-like form.”