Latest News and Events of Dedham Country Day School Boston Area

DCD Partners with Cradles to Crayons for Its Third Annual Collecting and Sorting Community Service Day

On Saturday, February 8^th, Dedham Country Day School hosted a special day of service to benefit children in the greater Boston area served by the Cradles to Crayons organization (C2C). C2C’s mission is to provide children from birth through age 12, living in homeless or low-income situations, with the essential items they need to thrive at home, at school, and at play.

Encouraging Musical Exploration at Dedham Country Day

This winter term, DCD’s Alternative Ensemble music program has returned with a new twist. A free after-school program created in 2013 by Duane Claussen and Rob Thacher for grade 4 and 5 students, the “Alt Ensemble” has taken a variety of shapes in exploring non-traditional approaches to music and sound, including improvisation, game-play, and instant composition.

Another BEE in the Books!

Third time's a charm for 5^th grader, Nate Felix, winner of this year’s spelling bee at Dedham Country Day. Twelve contestants from 3^rd to 8^th grade, representing the top spelling performers each class, flexed their spelling muscle in this morning’s competition.

DCD Honors Martin Luther King Jr. with Service Morning

Last Friday’s annual morning of service at DCD in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. showed there are no age requirements for kindness and compassion. Students spent the morning engaging in age-appropriate service activities, from the youngest in pre-K to eighth-graders who are getting ready to move on to high school, finding meaningful ways to serve others as the focus of the morning.

DCD Students Show Their Knowledge of Geography in Annual Bee

DCD's Geography Bee took place Thursday, January 16, with students in Grades 4 through 8 vying for first place and the chance to go on to the statewide competition in the spring.

How Does a Five-year-old Learn Computational Thinking Skills?

It might just look like fun and games to the casual observer, but armed with iPads and Dash and Dot robots, kindergartners at DCD are doing some important developmental work building their computational thinking skills.

Light It Up! The Parents We Hope to Be

As parents and educators, we often hold two different goals side by side that can create some dynamic tension. On one hand, we try to shape our children and guide them towards values, behaviors, and attitudes that we believe and respect; we have conscious or unconscious ideas about who we hope our children will be. At the same time, we work to embrace our children for who they are, allowing them to become the fullest version of themselves. At times, these two goals can become inconsistent, since our children – in being fully themselves – may exhibit values, behaviors, and attitudes that do not align with our own or our hopes for our children. So what to do then? The way parents shape children, and in turn, the way children shape parents, is one of the most nuanced, challenging and beautiful aspects of parenting.

DCD’s Green Club Explores Composting

During Friday’s middle school service-learning afternoon, DCD’s Green Club met with Adam Jankauskasfrom City Compost to learn about the process and benefits of composting. Currently, City Compost is working with over 2000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts to collect food scraps and process this material into finished compost.

Middle School Fall Sports Wrap Up

92 athletes. 60 games. 7 meets. 11 coaches. 7 teams. 25 competing schools. 2 undefeated teams! That’s a wrap for DCD’s 2019 fall sports season!

Whether a seasoned athlete or new to a sport, students enjoyed a great season of competition and camaraderie participating in teams in soccer, field hockey, flag football, and cross country. For a small school, we are very proud of our middle school athletics program. DCD’s teacher/coach model enables a broad athletics offering as well as an opportunity for teachers and students to build special relationships and connections that span both the classroom and athletic field or track. “It’s really gratifying and productive to see and experience our students in a totally different context” notes Dan Balk, 6th-grade faculty member, and flag football coach.

Patriots Player stops by Special Olympics practice at DCD

Patriots player Obi Melifonwu stopped by DCD for the final Special Olympics flag football practice of the fall last Monday, a thrill for the five seventh-grade boys who have been playing with the team all fall as volunteers! Neil Burmeister, Willy Connors, LJ Gage, Owen Hotra, and Gabe Salfity made it to all the practices, which took place on Mondays this fall from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. on the front field at DCD.