Outdoor October 16th

We got started outside on this crispy morning, had a beautiful morning circle with lots of energy clearing and beautiful song. Our sit spots are routine now and our animal messages were spot on!

After circle we read "The Grateful Book" while we enjoyed our snacks in the sunshine. We connected many details from the story to our feast yesterday and our day to come. Student reflections were amazing to hear and there lots!

Corbin led the way for our foraging hike this morning. Our theme today was finding food & medicine. While we were hiking, we discovered a cool Beetle and a Spider, and today nobody screamed or became obviously afraid in any way. Progress!! We found a Wood Pecker and got to watch as short order was made of the branches of the Willow. Corbin also showed everyone how to crack an acorn to see what was inside. Oakley found an acorn that had a very shrivelled up but inside

Our job today was to see how many plant friends we can find that are food, medicine, or food AND medicine. Everyone had fun classifying in this way, and all are very clearly showing growth in what they remember, responding thoughtfully, thinking deeply and as a result sharing spontaneous and correct identifications that surprise even them! Today we identified 10+ helpful Plant friends!

Students also climbed trees, gave Love to many Trees, ate some grapes, checked on our animal fort and bug hotel from a previous outdoor day, and took long moments touching the Jack Pine, and made beautiful music to honour the life of the Tree (it is marked with spray paint to be removed). Everything today was led by the students...and they all blew me away with their kindness, thoughtfulness, cooperation and how they utilized feedback and support.

Back at the school after lunch and free play with our life cycle models, I pulled out all I had collected on the hike to support learning. We utilized a ven diagram to clearly show the food plants, medicine plants, and those that fit into both categories. While we were in between rubbings, we organized all the leaves we found. Recall was 70% student led!! Everyone made 6 rubbings today and recorded the names of the plants in their notebooks. We will come back to this learning throughout the year and today was a fabulous foundation.

We headed outside to plant our baby potatoes with eyes from our small potatoes from 2024 in our garden. This is an experiment to see if we can have a Spring potato crop. Everyone agrees that extra potatoes are awesome! Each student planted two potato clusters.

We headed back to park to play on the climbers with the walkey talkies after planting. This is a game the students beg for, where I give instructions over the radio and they follow the steps. It is an excellent game to support and observe how everyone understands and can follow instructions. I weave a little plant identification in as well.

After the park, we returned to enjoy a tea we made from a few of our foraged medicinals: Rose Hips, Mullein, and Colts Foot. The tea was very weak, and everyone enjoyed the Earthy flavour. The extra tea was sent home with Oakley with ingredients and instructions because we collected the leaves to help him with his cough.

After tea we enjoyed sharing board with a LOT of shares!

Have a great weekend everyone!