March 2024
"Happiness? The color of it must be spring green."
-Francis Mayes
Water Clan has shown some significant growth, I am seeing kiddos deep in play, kids taking appropriate risks and our circle times are a lot longer now with kids sitting and engaging in songs and discussions much longer than January.
Hi Earth families! I hope you had a great mid-winter break back a few weeks. The kids have done a few things with our rock unit, including hardness testing, rock hunting, and love rocks on friendship day. We still have the rock cycle and rock families to complete but lately our water unit has been more of the focus. In addition to the water cycle and animal water architects, we have been discussing how water can be dangerous but also how to keep ourselves safe in water and how erosion and currents work. I am excited to see the kids’ drawings or representations of water to add to our poster to show the school at all school circle for the Thursday before spring break! We are continuing to build our carving skills and some of us have begun to work on crochet and knitting skills as well during our guild times on Thursday mornings. Holly has been continuing to come to do artisan skills with us on Mondays and we are beginning to see the signs of spring so it was really fun to learn how to harvest cottonwood buds and begin the oil infusing process to make cottonwood salve these last couple weeks! We will continue to do show and tell Wednesdays, it’s been really fun to have the kids share like that at our circle time. It’s getting close to spring, I look forward to warmer days and back to the beach whenever we can!
There is beautiful growth happening amongst the Air Clan kids! Like blossoms ready for springtime, these children are bursting with excitement for what’s next. We’ve started working on our Water Projects- each child is learning how to find information in books, synthesize their learning into their own hand-written sentences, and soon we will be adding artwork to these growing projects with the expert guidance of Ms Marta. As always, every child is working towards a better understanding of their own feelings and needs and learning to navigate conflict amongst peers. What I love to see this time of year is the seamless flow of the routine- every morning when we ring the bell for Circle, our class decides collaboratively on the exact Circle Time locale, and they gather into a circle without adult assistance. They are beginning to self-govern!
Fire Clan is growing so much socially and academically during this late winter season. We are currently focused on our water projects and this class is loving taking multiple trips to the library to research their interests. They are now gathering their knowledge to put together into a finished project to share with and teach back to our community after Spring Break! Stay tuned for a presentation date!
All School Guided Field Trip Bonneville Dam
Save the date for an all school finale field trip to close out our winter water focused projects. This field trip is optional and falls on a Friday. Teachers will not be attending, this is for parents who would like to extend their child’s learning and be in community with one another! A park ranger will be meeting and guiding the group on a 90 minute tour discussing the inner workings of the dam, including: electricity, hydropower, energy, geology and migratory fish. There is also a self guided tour that takes about an hour nearby at the hatchery. The cap for our group of kids is 35 (not including adults), so please sign up so that we can let the park ranger know how many to expect.
Equinox Celebration
Volunteers needed, please reach out to Heidi if you can help with the following:
Make Nettle Pesto the day ahead of time for us to taste.
Harvest Nettle and dehydrate at home the week before.
Bring in a baby animal.
Make Nettle Tea day of and help serve students.