Housatonic Valley Waldorf School eighth grade students are tasked each year with choosing and executing a yearlong project. This year's class, under the guidance of teacher Marleen De Grande, completed its projects and shared culminating presentations with their fellow school students April 6.This story was updated to reflect all of the students who completed projects this year.

A presentation of the projects was also shared for family and friends on April 7.

Students in the class chose to study a range of topics this year, and each student worked with one or more mentors to complete the chosen projects.

James Reilly studied Tempo Karate, Sean Christiansen built a bike, Ceara Ancona studied passive houses, Brendon Parker studied the history of magic, Isabelle Abramson learned Krav Maga, Liam Counter refurbished a dirt bike, Riley Hurly built model rockets, Lily Blyn oversaw a project to build a tree house, Lily Mikita designed and sewed a Shakespearean costume for the school's upcoming play, Henry James learned to sail, May Baldwin learned about Native American Pottery, and Christopher Strilowich learned about auto body repair.

Each student shared a presentation that described how they began studying their chosen topic and how they created projects.

"A passive house is a highly energy-efficient way of building," said Ceara, later sharing that she is interested in architecture and was inspired to study passive houses after a neighbor built one. She constructed a model of a portion of a wall to demonstrate insulation and more.

After sharing a brief history of magic and magicians such as Harry Houdini, Brendon demonstrated some of the magic tricks he learned. After asking a fellow student to pull a card from a deck of card, Brendon revealed the card in a box he had placed on the table at the start of the trick. He also pulled a larger than normal wand from a bag.

After listening to all of the presentations, the entire student body went into a larger room to see Isabelle demonstrate some of the defensive moves she learned while studying Krav Maga at Krav Maga NYC. Her trainer, Trisha Formisano, helped her demonstrate how to fend off different attacks.