One of my favorite outside activities that we are doing at IOS is nature journaling.  We begin by recording the date and temperature and making a small box on our page to draw what the clouds look like today.  Then we sketch what we see.  There is so much to see, from the little twigs with their complicated bark markings, to rocks with rough grainy surfaces to the way the creek looks as the water swirls around tree trunks.

As we sit and sketch, we become aware of birds starting to sing around us because we have become so quiet.  Looking up, I notice that you can see bird nests so much better in February when there are no leaves in the canopy.  Beauty is everywhere around us even now in its more stark attire. 

One of the most inspiring movies to come out of the change in education movement of the last few years is "August to June: Bringing Life to School.   I have watched it over and over and have fallen in love with Amy and her class.  One of the things she did with her students that we have embraced this year is to create a self portrait each month and make a book of them at the end of the school year.  Last week our students studied the work of Picasso and Cubism, before working on their portraits for January.  Here one of our third graders studies her face as she makes the portrait. 

Here is her finished portrait.   The intermediate class used water color and the primary class worked with oil pastels.  Brain Pop provided the background on Picasso.  We used overhead projectors to help with the silhouette part of the project. 

This week we will focus on imagination for our Dimension of Human Greatness.  We began on Monday by imagining the life we want for ourselves in the future.  My visualization was that our school was continuing to flourish and that our influence spread beyond our gates, that our vision of children in nature at school could have the kind of influence on education that Amy has had from her California classroom. 

I want for children everywhere to be free to ramble in the woods in every season.  I hope they will all see the patches of green begin to appear at the end of winter. I imagine that every child will know the joy of splashing in a flowing creek and trading berries in their woodland storefront.   I wish for each child to know the excitement of collecting an egg from the chickens, and to be able to grow food and use a screw driver.  This is a face of education...
a happy face.