We had turnips and radishes from "below"...

and rosemary, mint, mung bean sprouts, peas, pea greens and pea flowers, mixed greens, chard, and nopales as well as items from cooking, craft and apothecary classes... pumpkin blondies,  whole wheat bread rolls, peppermint patties, peppermint play-doh, Christmas tree ornaments and goldenrod tincture.

We also finished up semester electives like survival skills,

and theater (with mystery dinner theater.)

This has been an amazing semester for our joy-filled community.  We had our first Woodland Faire in November and our second school campout in December.  At the end of each day, we "harvest" our favorite moments of the day.  My favorite thing to harvest this semester was introducing nature journaling to the kindergarten.  Our favorite spot has been the farmyard. Happy Holidays!

CSA and Farmer's Market Stand at IOS this year!
A CSA is a community supported agricultural endeavor.  This year we are stepping into new territory as we introduce two new projects to our school family as part of our yearlong theme, "What's For Dinner."  We plan to start small with weekly produce baskets for perhaps 5 to 7 subscribing families.  The students will be integrating the development and application of math, reading, writing, observation and exploration tools as we take this new step together.  Students will work at the school's farmer's market a few times this school year and volunteer at the Pflugerville farmer's market and community gardens.   Our students will learn a variety of skills through these projects, including marketing strategies, customer service, budgeting, finance, recipe development, and self-confidence, but best of all, they will be having fun outside in the magic world of nature.  You will be hearing more about this as we take our next steps.   

Our gluten-free cooking class had a blast cooking and baking our way through the year! We practiced important kitchen skills such as washing our hands beforehand, measuring ingredients, careful stove and oven procedures, rolling dough, and trusting our instincts as well as our recipes.  Our class made many delicious foods this year, including homemade pretzels, cheesy herb pasta, cinnamon rolls, flapjacks, Earth Day balls, cute grilled cheeses and fruit snacks, smoothies, ice cream-in-a-bag and much more! They especially loved doing some blind taste-testing of apple varieties and cheeses.  (If your child has an inexplicable desire for gruyere or Gouda, this might be why!)  I hope their enthusiasm for all things culinary continues to grow as they do!

Our apothecary classes  focused on how to use a variety of herbs for their healing properties. Students collected herbs from the apothecary gardens and the natural environment on campus. They used the botany book to identify herbs and discover their properties. The products students created this semester included: beeswax lip balm, cooling tea, lavender oil essences, beeswax candles, incense, sore throat pastilles and immune system-building oils. Students learned that different plants’ healing properties are harvested from different parts of the plants. 

 

We continued to work on gardening skills and awareness of plant life cycles with the planting of cool season crops, including French sorrel, lettuce, dill, kohlrabi, snow peas, potatoes, and carrots. We learned about the different parts of plants and their roles by examining our crops (carrots are roots, broccoli is flower buds) and playing “plant part bingo” as well as acting out the parts of a tree. When the weather warmed up, we planted tomatoes with funny names, as well as basil, cucumbers, and watermelon. A favorite part of the gardening was learning about the traditional American Three Sisters garden that mixes corn, beans and squash. Our Three Sisters garden is doing well with the beans climbing the corn stalks, squash leaves shading the ground, and buried dead fish acting as fertilizer for them all. Elsewhere we created an edible play area by erecting a tepee and planting sugar snap peas and later pole beans around it.  We talked about our five senses while exploring our gardens using them all-- touching fuzzy leaves and square stems; smelling sweet chocolate daisies; tasting herbs; observing germination, growth and development of flowers and fruit; and listening for birds and bees. We had great time learning about Arbor Day while planting a native chinquapin oak seedling. We learned how animals look different and have different life strategies by observing Cabbage White butterfly caterpillars that metamorphosed on our mustard plant, a dead Barred Owl, a mouse, slugs and snails, and plenty of other insects and arachnids. We learned about spring time by going on scavenger hunts, finding and eating edible plants, reading about and observing birds, including our hatching chicks, and acting out spring time activities such as birds making nests and laying eggs.  Semester report from Helen for the primary class

We are always looking for amazing ways to get outside for math and science.  I have been creating math trails over the last month for my math class, and then last week the students created a math trail for the primary students using some of the math concepts that the younger class has been working with.  But what about the upper elementary class?  One thing they have done recently is to use the stick method to determine the height of trees.  All you need is a stick and a measuring tape.

They also worked to determine the diameter of trees after measuring the circumference. The circumference is measured at 4.5 feet up from the ground.  Then you divide the circumference by pi (3.14)  It is great to estimate before measuring, and then you can always throw in a little subtraction when you determine the difference between the estimate and the actual measurement.  A final activity was measuring the canopy of a tree.

Another great way to integrate math and science is with a square foot garden. You can see the string that the students used earlier in the year to mark off the squares after measuring the perimeter and area of the planting space.  Once the garden is divided, students must research the plants they want to plant to find out how many plants each square will support.  This garden has been harvested and replanted throughout the school year. Growth of plants can be measured, recorded and compared.  Another  part of gardening is weighing the harvest and recording the data.  Then of course you get to use the basil and tomatoes for making lasagna. Integrating math into cooking is another great way to make connections, but that is indoor work for us right now until we get the rest of our outdoor kitchen set up unless we are using the cob oven.

One of the great ways we have created active learning connections outside for our Native American Cultural study is here in the garden where the students set up a "three sisters" garden with Helen (our nature science teacher).  We even "planted" a dead fish from our creek to enrich the soil.   The corn provides a pole for the beans, the beans stabilize the corn plant and fix nitrogen while the squash acts as mulch preventing evaporation of moisture in the soil.  Of course the nutritional elements of these foods adds additional material for learning. 

Helen recently noticed there were caterpillars and chrysalises on this mustard plant.  Helen brought in a number of books for the students to use to find out what they were seeing.

It turned out to be a cabbage butterfly and we all got to see one of them freshly emerged and drying its wings the following week.  Today we want to measure the velocity of the creek water by measuring how fast an object travels from point A to point B.  This is exciting work since we have had a lot of rain.   Some preliminary leg work indicated that there are little whirlpools and lots of other pieces of floating debris that will create additional variables.  It might become an even better study of urban trash run off from storms. 

 A few months ago I decided to write a book about math trails.  I thought it would be easy because I am so passionate about the topic, but it is hard to convey the excitement of an outdoor math adventure on paper.  I've been wondering if this should be a movie instead.  Today's blog is a sharing of some of the work a math group has been doing the past week outdoors.  On this math trail there are a few stations where the students will find a white board with a problem on it typical of what we've been doing in our class.  They have a trail map to record their work and answers on a clipboard.

The magnetic garage door of the theater building is an excellent stop on the trail now that we have a set of large magnetic money. 

And by the way, in case you've ever wondered, money can grow on trees when you are doing math outdoors....

and even in the garden.   These kind of math adventures are so much fun because it is a lot like an Easter egg hunt!

Speaking of Easter egg hunts, at  station #3 on the trail three eggs were hidden under a traffic cone.  Each one had 6 shells in it.  The traffic cones are a great way to make it clear where the math stations are set up. 

The driveway is part of our outdoor classroom.  We used cement paint to mark large number lines and a blank hundreds chart here.

Here you can see a sample of some of our manipulatives;  wooden number blocks that the shop classes helped to create, felt number patches that were made last year in sewing classes and wooden ten sticks.   This student has just solved 82-29.  These activities all happened on the school grounds not far from the buildings.  Maybe next time we will see what a math trail can look like in the woods down by the creek. 

Here is what is happening at IOS..Our 8 baby chicks are now two weeks old, old enough to be cuddled.  It is amazing to me how much more they eat than the 3 we hatched last spring! 

It is finally warm enough to have outside classes again, which is what I live for. 

The creek and the woods are still cool at the end of the day.  Our time in the woods is sacred to us and is still our favorite part of the day. 

All the reading, writing, arithmetic, independent studies and nature studies continue as we move through each week.  Kayla's class is deep into the mysteries of the universe, Rachel's French class members are writing pen pal letters to new friends in France, Tara's students are graduating from from sentences to paragraphs. We have a new oak tree sapling planted in honor of Arbor Day and Tom is happy because we have a new chain saw.  By the way, he walked 5 miles mowing the grass last Tuesday!  In gratitude for all of this, Deborah