The Equinox and Seeds of Fall
Originally published Sept 25, 2022
Happy Autumn! We enjoyed celebrating the change of seasons this past week with a meetup with Red Fox owls and hawks classes in the forest. For those not familiar, Red Fox is a small private elementary school located on the other side of the forest. We share similarities in focus and style of instruction and try to collaborate at appropriate times like the Equinoxes and the Solstice to expand our sense of community and ceremony for these ecological events together. It was a lovely gathering of children aged 3-8, including exploration and play in the forest together looking for signs of fall, songs, poems, and sharing of gratitudes. We also got to see a former Fiddleheads friend and a big brother.
And of course we also celebrated at school on Thursday evening, sharing songs and poems, creating a beautiful altar together, eating nut cookies baked by the children during the morning and drinking mint tea. Thanks so much to all of you who could come and take a moment to mark this shift in the year and draw together in community. Send me photos!
At school last week we had some fun playing with a new interactive playhouse that Grandpa Ronnie, (my Dad), built for us. It may look a little rough, but in my experience, nice, perfect play houses lead mostly to two kinds of play; hoarding of things inside, and exclusion about who can go in and who can go out. Human nature I guess! So this playhouse is unfinished with a moveable roof, a moveable wall, and puzzle-like windows that can become walls or doors. It's intended to invite cooperative building and creativity .
We also continued our study of chipmunks and squirrels. On Monday we read Squirrel's Family Tree, a beautiful book written in verse about the mutually beneficial connection between squirrels, acorns and oak trees. Then we talked about these connections, particularly the fact that squirrel's forgetfulness allows the inadvertent planting of many oak trees. We practiced burying acorns and trying to find them again. We each had 5 acorns, we hid them, we came back to circle, then we went back and tried to find them again. Much like squirrels, not many of us could find all 5 again, so hopefully we helped some oak trees out! On Tuesday we met Red Fox and had our Equinox Gathering together. Then we read Squirrels Leap, Squirrels Sleep, and built ourselves a drey (squirrel house.) On Wednesday we read Chipmunk Song, a sweet story that really pulls the reader into the underground world and habits of chipmunks. We played a chipmunk challenge game, where we had to move acorns and pine cones from a pile in the forest into our underground home to get ready for winter all without using our hands, and while hiding from the hawk. It was exciting and the children were enchanted, reaching a fully immersive level of play. This kind of activity doesn't come across well in photos, but it is one of the most magical and memorable experiences that they have at this school, where play becomes learning and crosses the line into identification with another being and its world. The long term benefits of this kind of activity cannot be extolled enough. Taking a deep interest in the world outside of ourselves and identifying with the natural world at large are gifts that keep on giving throughout our lives.
On Thursday we had some serious rain in the morning. We did morning circle inside together, and then baked cookies using the last of the nut butter that we made the previous week. We read the recipe together and looked for letters and numbers that we recognized. We tried sounding out some words like "cup" and "nut." Later that afternoon we went outside, went to the barn and gathered eggs, and then came back and made rolling acorn paintings, (we place paper in trays, then dropped smooth acorns in little cup of paint, then tilt the trays to roll the painty acorns across the paper to make designs.)
Next week we will begin talking about seeds and fruit! We have some rye that a farmer friend grew for us that we will be threshing and winnowing. We will be harvesting the flint corn from the garden, and we will be using some of the pie pumpkins as well. It will be fun! I'm thinking about organizing a school apple picking trip on Thursday morning the 6th of October. I'll keep you posted. All school families would be welcome to attend, even children not enrolled for that day, and we would need parent volunteers.