By Amy Silver Hearthstone Parent At Hearthstone School this

By Amy Silver

Hearthstone Parent

At Hearthstone School this month, the big news was the Hootenanny, held at the Blue Moon Cafe on Feb. 23. Student musicians and actors had been preparing for the event for months, and their performances were stellar.

The evening raised over $3,000 towards renovation of 25 percent of Hearthstone’s main building into a community performance, meeting, and activities space, thanks to the efforts of the many local artists who donated their time and talent.

• Kitty Keller-Keyser’s nursery-Kindergartners are working on hand-made cloth crayon holders, weaving baskets, and doing four-finger knitting. The older Ks are practicing forming letters based on stories and fairy tales.

• Paige Noel’s first through third grade students finished their reports on arctic animals. They also hiked to Woods Cave near Rileyville in Page County.

• Shepard Booth-Enoch (Sperryville) gave a report to the class on his trip to Costa Rica, where he saw poison dart frogs and many reptiles.

• Jessica Haase’s middle schoolers finished a section on light and sound. They wrote cryptic messages using mirror images and did charcoal drawings using light and negative space.

• Alice Currin’s class finished their unit on the middle ages. They completed their quests and tasks and were knighted by the Queen, had a middle ages feast, and wrote biographies of middle ages figures from King John to Vlad the Impaler.

• Amos Blanton’s upper school class finished their African studies. Highlights of that unit included visiting the Museum of African History in Washington, DC, seeing an IMAX film on the Serengeti, creating African masks, and learning African drumming from Rappahannock resident Janet Kerig.

• Mr. Blanton’s computer science class is writing a video game, creating both the story and the game. In Creative Community (a weekly class in which a local community member talks to the upper