Page 155 - 1990 Wardlaw Hartridge

the STAR-LEDGER,Thursday,February8,1990
A Garden State that's good enough to eat By PATRICIA C. TURNER
“ It's good and fun and educa­ tional," Munish Bakshi of Edison said of a recent lesson in New Jersey geo­ graphy for fourth-grade students at the Wardlaw-Hartridge School,
“ And It tastes good"
Munish and his 27 classmates in two groups spend the whole fourth- grade year studying New Jersey.
Last week they got to eat cake, too.
Each student was sent home with materials for making a yellow- cake in two rectangular pans and for making white frosting.
Each of the fourth-graders brought the cake and icing back to school, and last week they cut their cakes into the state's 21 counties, col­ ored their frosting red, blue, yellow or green as instructed and assembled the cake-counties into large State of New Jersey cakes —one made by Ellen Ritz’s fourth grade, the other by Sandra Drier's class.
Most of the school’s teachers dropped in to watch the unusual geo- graph)' lesson, and both kindergartens came through to see what was going on.
Photo by Wally Hennig Aaron Powell, n, of South Plainfield gets his share of Middlesex County from Jessica Mantak, 10, of Coloni a. Students at the Wardlaw-Hartridge School in Plainfield made cakes in the shape of New
Jersey and its counties
Both cakes were displayed for half an hour before lunch, so all 249 children on the Plainfield campus could see the Garden State covered with bright icing
Then everybody got a piece for dessert.
Ritz, a Piscat’away resident, said Ward­ law-Hartridge fourth-graders spend the whole year learning about New Jersey in their geo­ graphy and history classes, as well as studying government and environmental issues.
The culmination, Ritz said, is a research project on some aspect of New Jersey that the students carry out in preparation for the school's annual public-speaking competition.
Ritz said the students learn a great deal about New Jersey this way, because each not only investigates his own topic, but also “prac­ tically memorizes” everyone else’s speech by hearing it often as they practice,
Ritz said she and Drier, a resident of War­ ren, work hard to tie together the material the youngsters are covering.
For instance, when they are learning about New Jersey farmlands in part of the cur­ riculum, their science unit concerns weath­ er; specifically, for instance, how rainfall amounts and timing affect crops.
Ritz said she and Drier attended a work­ shop sponsored by Kings supermarkets and Na-
bisco at which they learned about creating the giant New Jersey cakes. Nabisco donates all of the materials needed, she said, and, perhaps more important, has developed the patterns for cutting the counties.
When completed, the Delaware River is Cheddar Quackers, the Atlantic Ocean Plain Quackers and the border with New York Ritz Bits.
The students stacked five Teddy Grahams to indicate the state's largest city, Newark; four for the second largest, Jersey City; three for the third largest , Paterson; two for the fourth largest, Elizabeth, and one for the fifth largest. Woodbridge.
Trenton, the state capital, is a Mallomar, and each of the county seats is a Brown Teddy Graham,
Oreos make up the Kittatinny Mountains; Plain Quackers, Lake Hopatcong, the state’s largest lake, and pretzels, the trees of the Pine Barrens.
The students stuck in Triscuit Bits for farmlands and Animal Crackers for the Appa­ lachian Trail through Sussex County.
Ritz said they designated Plainfield with a Brown Giggle as “where we live” because, al­ though the children at the private school live in many towns, they often discuss Plainfield.
For favorite places to visit they selected the Shore, the mountains and the Pine Barrens.
Almost everyone wound up with cake and icing on his uniform, despite the best efforts of the class mothers, Ellen Laird, Debby Le- bowitz, Marie Bonk and Helene Yatrakis, to keep things neat.
There was a certain amount of unauth­ orized nibbling during the geography class, but Henry Rich of Highland Park was polite enough to ask Drier if he could lick the icing off his hands.
“Yes,” she said, “but then you have to go wash your hands again."
Chris Fiedler of South Plainfield said he was “ really” enjoying the Middlesex County he was creating. “ And,” he added, indicating Edi­ son, “ the upper school is there ”
Meanwhile, class mother Debby Lebowitz of Edison tried to comfort George Dapper of South Plainfield, whose “Mercer County was just too wet on the bottom,” as she explained, when he tried to pop it out of the pan.
Aaron Powell of South Plainfield pro­ claimed that he was “dead meat” when his over-enthusiastic icing technqiue tore a hole in his cake, but then he learned the long-stand­ ing cake baker's trick of sticking things back with frosting.