Trees

Originally published November 7th

Hello everyone,

We had a nice, chilly week talking about trees. We had a little Halloween recovery time on Monday, but we still managed to read The Grand Old Tree, start learning some new tree songs, and talk about how trees have lives and life cycles like ours. We found baby trees and talked about grandmother trees and looked for tree families in our play spot in the woods. On Tuesday we read the wonderful book Be a Tree, which draws beautiful parallels between our lives and societies, and those of trees. We talked about tree body parts and tree communication. We pretended to be trees, acting out our growth, and we practiced sending messages through our roots and through the air. On Wednesday we read The Busy Tree, and started to talk about all of the creatures that might live in or on a tree. On Thursday we read One Small Place in a Tree, which tells the story of a tree that lives and dies and is used as a home and source of food by many different creatures in both its life and afterlife. We "cooked" ants on a log, and then we made drippy tree paintings with roots, branches and leaves.

On Thursday we also had a beautiful Diwali circle with Malika and Vir. Malika and Vir shared a book about the story of Diwali, the triumph of good over evil and the celebration of light. The children were captivated and did an excellent job listening and participating! Malika and Vir also brought some special homemade chickpea and pistachio sweets for us to try, which were a big hit. We lit a candle in the center of our circle and sent good wishes out into the world. We opened presents from Seher and her family, (everyone should have had a new pair of colorful socks in their backpacks on Thursday, or if you weren't here they are waiting in the cubby). Then we decorated circular candle coasters to hold our own Diwali candles to take home and bring Diwali celebration into our own houses. It was a lovely morning at school, and many thanks to Seher, Malika and Vir for putting so much thought and care into sharing this holiday with the class. It was very special.

We also talked this week about evergreens and what an evergreen is and why it is called ever-green. We can see many evergreens now that most other trees are bare. We heard crows, ravens, jays, chickadees and the trees creaking in the wind. We found a cold little toad under the leaves. We watched many of the last leaves fall. We noticed the cold ground and leaf blanket on it as we ate our snack. We noticed the sky and the wind and the weather changing early last week, bringing the colder days.

This next week looks warmer weather wise, and maybe some rain toward the end of the week. Mornings will still be chilly, but things should warm up quite a bit by late afternoon. Thanks again for all of the prep and care that goes into getting everyone ready for a comfortable day at forest school!