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
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Our semester has ended with an amazing EXPO, and suddenly everything is very quiet around here. The teachers are busy finishing narrative reports and have been sending in their elective write ups. Since there won't be much to report until summer camp, I thought I would share the elective reports for the next few blogs. This is Rachel's write up about the two survival skills electives she offered this semester... This semester in survival, students participated in a number of fun and engaging activities. They used their powers of creative thinking to decide how many different uses one object could provide. They learned about the seven basic needs of survival, identification of local venomous snakes and spiders (via pictures – although we did see a baby coral snake one day!), and basic wilderness first aid, as well as what to put in a basic survival kit. Students had hands-on experience in a variety of fire-building methods, and got to try out a fire drill. They learned knife safety, ways of making water safe to drink, and different types of shelter they could seek. Students participated in making cane poles, fishing in the creek, and building a wikiup. On the final Friday, both classes participated in a brainstorming activity to help envision how the survival class could continue to grow in interest, usefulness, and excitement for next year. I hope they will all continue to seek experiences that will foster a love of the outdoors, and will teach them how to be safe in the wilderness. 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. As we come closer to the end of the semester, our sewing class is completing their pajama bottoms project. 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
Recently, our families spent a Saturday morning participating in our 2nd Nature Workshop. Here a student helps his younger brother with one of the math trail activities. Another part of the math trail was measuring a section of the flag pole and estimating the entire height. In the "All about Goats," class, one willing dad got to be fully decked out with goat anatomy. The students had previously experienced this in their nature science class with Ms. Helen during the semester. In the "Meet a Tree," class participants were led blindfolded to a tree and allowed to discover the tree. After returning to start and losing the blindfold they tried to find their way back to the tree. Creekside sit spot was another activity that students at the Inside Outside school really enjoy. Some of us returned here for a picnic after the final activity...Ant Lion Tag. A team of students works together to carry the long fishing net from near the gate across the woods to the creek bank where a discovery has been made. Something interesting is in the creek, and they are going to try to get it out. This is not going to work because the object is waterlogged and stuck in the mud. Perhaps a different angle would give more leverage. Can you tell what it is yet? He almost has it. Someone's Teddy Bear Picnic must have gone terribly wrong somehow. Teddy is drying out now. More adventures await him for sure. This third year of our school's life has been really wonderful and really hard. I have hesitated to write when I have been in the thick of challenges, not wanting to focus on the things that haven't been fun. I watched our little school bus get towed away for the second time in two weeks yesterday. It had broken down 4 times in 2 weeks. Unexpected and not fun. Our repair bill is unexpected and I am trying to digest it calmly as I write today. Several students have left our school this year. It is hard to be what everyone wants, and hard when endings happen, emotionally, financially and possibly on our reputation because we humans, as customers, for various reasons, tend to post ratings more often when dissatisfied than when content. We had to find new teachers when one teacher became pregnant and a new teacher hired didn't work out. This created a wobble and a ripple. We have two new amazing teachers now and it feels like we are lifting off again. None of this was easy, and it seemed like it was one thing after another and sometimes all at once. I read in a book recently something that seemed spot on... "road of trials." We've been on a road of trials, and it may just be the way things are when you do something HUGE. We are doing something huge. Every day it feels like we have offered a blessing to the world. How? By letting children learn by playing. By giving children a place to play in the woods and in the creek. By helping children learn about native plants, gardening and composting. By offering children tools for resolving their conflicts and managing their emotions. By making gluten free pizza in our cob oven. By collecting eggs from our chicken, learning how to build a fire, washing our own laundry, making granola and writing poetry. And that was all just what we did in the last week. Parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles joined us for our semester Expo on December 18th. The primary class presented their semester inquiry work about bees. Here they are performing a song about bee anatomy. After their bee presentations, which included their own choreographed bee fact dances, their families were invited to move through their classroom learning centers. Here we have buddy reading in the bathtub with Ian and the bumble bees. Below are highlights of some of the intermediate and upper elementary presentations of Inquiry Quest independent study work. After the presentations, our winter store opened. Comfrey salve, aromatherapy play dough, hand made wrapping paper, chocolate peppermint bark, and Blue Santa sock monkey photos were offered as a part of our fund raiser for our new rainwater collection system.
Kumquat is the last of our chick hatchlings from March. She is a survivor and has become part of a barnyard community. She was nanny to the baby goats, napping with them and following them from pasture to pasture. Now she has this great relationship with Maybelline, our donkey. When the flies were thick a few weeks ago, they were biting Maybelline's legs and tormenting her. Kumquat would come stand under the donkey and pick off the flies, securing an easy luncheon and providing a bit of relief for Maybelline. Now she jumps on Maybelline's back and gives her a chicken scratch massage and picks off any insects that she can find. It is a good metaphor for how children of different ages interact and support each other at the Inside Outside School. Several of our Upper Elementary students have regular appointments to volunteer in the primary class, playing math games, reading to students and helping to walk them to class after free time. It is not always one big happy family, but there is something so beautiful happening here that even the barnyard has taken hold of the philosophy. In gratitude I wish you a Merry Christmas. |
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