Outdoor Feb 19&20

Thursday

Our morning began with marble track building and math games before circle. There was lots of curiosity, teamwork and marble races!!

After our morning circle, we settled in for snack and a story. Today we read Curious George Makes Maple Syrup and everyone loved it! It was a great way to introduce our Tree tapping day.

After our story and some more marble track, we tucked in to the activity table and explored spiles, drill, drill bit, Maple Tree info pages and all the tools we would be using to turn our Maple Sap into Maple Syrup. We also explored A Kid's Guide to Maple Tapping, and discussed the different layers of wood in the trunk of the Maple Tree, and I shared how sap to a Tree is like our blood is to us! It carries nutrition and energy to where it needs to go! Students drew their spiles in their workbooks and a Maple Leaf as well, which lead to noticing the veins in the leaf and comparing it to the Canada Flag and our hands 🖐

Next we set to work washing our storage buckets and sap collection buckets with warm soapy water and sponges to ensure they were clean.

We suited up and headed outside to tap our maple trees. We reviewed our directions in the backyard, finding North and South. We always tap on the South side of the tree, because that is the sunny side of the tree trunk. Everyone took turns drilling the holes and being careful to choose spots to drill away from holes from previous years. Corbin carefully tapped in the spiles and hung the buckets...then the sap sampling began. We check out the sap in our refractometer to ensure there was enough sugar in the sap to make syrup with. There was!!

After lunch and free play, we headed out for some play...today the boys played on the snow pile and the girls searched for crystals in the rock garden. We also explored around the garden to see what was growing. We found Stellaria, Onions, Lime Balm, Red Cabbage, some Greens growing and checked the buds on our Elderberry trees. We will check on our garden weekly now. We also noticed that the earth in our potato patch had cracks in it...which could mean that our potatoes are growing under there...we are very excited for that!

We also ordered two Blueberry bushes that will be delivered in early May ❤

Friday

Today Gordie began with number blocks, comparing numbers, creating equivalents, and building some number towers from activity cards.

Gordie led our circle this morning, correctly identifying all the parts that came next and learning about tapping as a way to move energy.

During snack we read The Snowflake: A Water Cycle Story. Gordie loved how the adventure of the water droplet has existed forever...and that the water we were drinking might have also been drank by a dinosaur!

After our story, we played our dice game and practiced telling our dice what to do 😁. We both won!

We went outside to check our sap buckets and strain them into our big storage buckets to save until we start boiling it all down next week. We noticed one tree gave much more sap than the other.

After collecting, we went for a hike to explore the trees on the property between the parking lot and the street. We hugged each one. We met many Oaks and Linden Trees. After we headed to the creek to watch sticks float under the bridge after dropping them off the side. The Creek is very swollen right now with water, so we stayed away from the water's edge. We returned to eat lunch and build a marble track together. Gordie explored more number block towers and the microscope, checking out how anything he could think of looked up close.

We ventured outside again to check our buckets and play, then returned inside to tidy up and build with the linkin logs.