"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.

No friendship is an accident

-O.Henry

Clan Updates -

Water Clan:

It doesn’t feel like I have seen much of those Water Clan kiddos with this weird weather and Winter break. The kids had a hard time transitioning back to school after winter break and asked when it was “gear check” a lot. After February break my hope is that we get into a flow and see some more growth.

Earth Clan:

Our Kinder kids are jumping into this year by being great leaders and helping Ms. G learn the forest play spots. We have been learning a sign language ABC song, counting forest critters, doing fruit tasting, graphing, learning the days of the week song in Spanish and English, (as well as many other songs, the kids are teaching me some great new ones) and so much more! We will be continuing letter name and sound work (building them and using forest tools to practice earth writing). This class LOVES books and I am so happy to read with them! They are finding and making rhymes in songs and books and just from forest finds. I am so excited to get into a nocturnal and diurnal animal unit with them next month!

Air Clan:

Your children in the Air Clan are doing so great! The hard work right now is the social/emotional learning, specifically self-control and using words to explain our feelings and needs. We read a native story every day, and we're getting into the groove of daily focused academic work. I am enjoying watching your kiddos learn to work as a team by asking each other for help, encouraging one another, and last Thursday they even got to a consensus decision on the day's adventure destination without help from an adult! We're off to an awesome start of the school year! 

Fire Clan:

Fire Clan kids are starting out the new year strong despite a very slow start with the ice storm! They are showing up excited to be at school each day and are weathering the cold and rainy elements without complaint or issue. They continue to set a wonderful example for the rest of our school. They did an excellent job leading their Forest Families last week, enjoyed making elderberry syrup the week before and are working hard during their academic blocks. They are going to start bringing home some extra math and reading work to complete at home (optional but encouraged). Having an extra gallon sized ziplock bag or similar lightweight waterproof envelope will help transport these papers without getting ruined by water/mud. We’re making headway in our water unit and our class will be starting to practice a Reader’s Theater to share with the rest of the school in the next few weeks.

Reading Challenge -

We’ve had so many comments from parents (and students) about how motivated their child is to read in the past few weeks and they are super excited to see how many minutes we can read as a school by February 7th. We are going to try to keep a weekly tally of minutes to share with kids during all school circle on Thursdays. Going forward, if you could text, email or send your child in with their total minutes read for the week (or since they last reported) by Wednesday nights that would be very helpful. It will make for some great math opportunities!

We will celebrate our 15,000 minute goal (which I think we will smash) on February 8th with a popcorn party and hot tea.

Friendship Day -

February 8th we will be celebrating Friendship Day at school. In the morning at drop off you can support (if needed) your child distributing their “love notes” to each friends bag. Then, near the end of the day, there will be popcorn and hot tea and book reading to honor Friendship Day. Our hope is that the students don’t go through their notes to one another until after school so things don’t get lost, dirty or scattered. Also, handmade cards are best, store bought are absolutely fine and please no sugar.

Ancestral Skills -

Here is what’s coming up:

January 29th - Ivy Baskets and/or Ivy Braids -extra hands needed!

February 5th - Sewn Heart Shape Lavender Sachets- extra hands needed!

February 19th - Cottonwood bud collection and friction fire

February 26th - Making Cottonwood Salve (Balm of Gilead)