The Experimentory Blog

Imagine: it's a hot, sticky day in late July. You've just finished a hike and you stop by a local ice cream stand on your way home. Stepping up to the window, you are amazed: they carry every flavor you can imagine--and many you can't: Noni, Anise, Snozzberry Crunch (what's a snozzberry?). Which do you choose? You wish you knew what they were like before you decide.  But maybe you should just...

Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Rey, Finn, and Poe. Percy, Grover, and Annabeth. It's good to have friends along for the ride when embarking on an adventure--whether that adventure be destroying the Ring of Power or spending a month maximizing your creativity and character.

Every year the Experimentory provides tuition grants to some of its students in order to make their participation possible. This year's deadline to apply for financial assistance is February 1st, 2019. Today we'll be examining the Financial Aid process.

After announcing our 2019 course listings in our last blog post, today we'll pull back the curtain and see how Exp19 course selection works.

If someone asks "What is most important in determining the success of the Experimentory each year?" the answer is clear: our students. But almost as important are our classes. Students attend the Experimentory to sample Deerfield Academy while maximizing their creativity and character. Our courses are where those goals become a practical reality. 

Imagine: it's a hot, sticky day in late July. You've just finished a hike and you stop by a local ice cream stand on your way home. Stepping up to the window, you are amazed: they carry every flavor you can imagine -- and many you can't: Noni, Anise, Snozzberry Crunch (what's a snozzberry?). What do you choose? You wish you could try them all first before you decide.  Maybe you should just go...

The Experimentory at Deerfield Academy is more than a catalogue of summer course offerings. It is not just a schedule of field trips and activities. It is not a recreational club with buildings and fields reserved for afternoon activities. In fact, the Experimentory isn't really an "it" at all --it's a "we"-- a community of mentors and students. 

In today's video post, former Experimentory student Xander reflects on how his Experimentory teachers, Mr. Payne and Ms. Melvoin, encouraged his curiosity and challenged him to take academic risks. The result? He returned home knowing more about architecture, culture, group dynamics -- and himself. 

Aren’t valleys are wonderful? Cool swimming on a hot summer day. Farming in dark, fertile soil. Messing about in boats. It is no quirk of fate or whim that European immigrants settled Deerfield, MA in one.

Of course that’s the perspective of a Valley Dweller. When you live on a mountain, valleys are obstacles. And we all live on mountains – figuratively speaking.

You want a tree.

Trees are made of wood, right? So you stop by a lumber yard and purchase some 2x4's. An hour, a bottle of wood glue, and a whole lot of nails later, you have a trunk. Since trees stick out of the ground, you bury one end in dirt. After drilling a few holes and jamming in some broken broom handles, you have branches. Cut up newspapers form leaves; crinkled aluminum foil is...