End of February Updates
originally published Feb 23, 2022
Hello everyone,
I hope that everyone is having a restful and restorative break. January is a hard month, and although the snow and ice are magical the deep freeze really takes a toll on our bodies. I know that I have been appreciating feeling rested and having a little break from routine, and I hope the same for our students and families.
We had a wonderful couple of weeks before break talking about friendship and community, leading up to our "friends day" party on the 10th. We talked about empathy, compassion, generosity, inclusion, kindness, self love, and the importance of listening. We read When We Are Kind, The Rabbit Listened, A Gift for You, Miss Rumphius, The Crown on Your Head, Strictly No Elephants, The Lion and the Mouse, and Love Monster and the Last Chocolate. We played cooperative play games, we painted stones and brainstormed kind and caring messages to put on them, we created offerings for our forest creature neighbors, we had discussions about kindness, self love, inclusion and community. On the 10th we made Valentine's baskets, homemade chocolates, exchanged cards and had a dance party! It was a lovely, open hearted unit of study. This is really the only time in the year that we stray from our curriculum focus of nature based discovery, but it still feels so natural and easy to focus on friendship and community with this age group, because they are naturally so deep in discovery of themselves and their friends as social beings. It's a very fruitful course of inquiry for them, and their thoughts and ideas on the subject are heartwarming.
Next week we will begin talking about mountains and valleys. I am extra excited about this, as it is a brand new unit for us. Where a lot of our programming is informed by curriculum that I originally created in the PNW, this unit will be unique to our special glaciated landscape. We will be talking about geology, erosion, rivers and the water cycle. We'll be looking at our local mountain ridges and examining the east branch of the Battenkill. We'll build landforms, make volcanoes and hopefully we'll have a lot of chances to explore with mud and water, or maybe water and ice, depending on the weather. We will finish this unit with a field trip on Thursday, March 10th to the Equinox Preserve where we will hike up Equinox to Robin's Lookout (not that long of a hike) and get a view across our valley to the Green Mountains. We will need parent volunteers to come along, and more info about logistics will be forthcoming.
I recently saw a meme about the 11 season of the year in VT. I found it to be kind of funny and pretty accurate. They are as follows for this time of year:
Winter
Fool's Spring
Second Winter
Spring of Deception
Third Winter
Mud Season
Actual Spring
We are somewhere around " Second Winter/Spring of Deception". Please be on your toes, checking that weather report regularly for the next couple of months as we fluctuate between cold and warm and mud and rain and ice. If it's really wet and slushy or rainy, snow boots, snow suits and snow jackets won't keep your child warm and dry. Keep the rain gear, the snow gear, and the layers handy. Thanks for your continued support with this so that we can enjoy all our outdoor discoveries and reap the benefits of our special kind of educational program.Thanks for making time for conferences, despite adverse conditions even for digital meetups. It was so wonderful to speak with those of you that we could, and we really look forward to meeting with you seriously ice stormed out Arlington and Sunderland families in March.