Sapling Core Nov 3-5

Kinship was our foundational teaching this week. Discussion around different kinds of communities occurred Monday during the learning, and Wednesday we read "The Gingerbread Girl" and students identified what was Kinship and what was not. They also pointed out nearly all of the other teachings as well.

This week began our first business immersion period of the school year!

Our mornings continued for this week as they have been before switching into business math topics and word problems next week. This week in math we covered fractions (reading, creating and adding), decimals (place value, adding and multiplying), BEDMAS and area word problems. In language we focused on our last spelling test, our foundational writing (how Kinship was discovered in student lives), reading our novels and cursive practice.

We begin each day with a reading from Braiding Sweetgrass for Youth.

Our afternoons were full of business learning. Monday we did a quiz to identify if we had an entrepreneurial mindset or an employee mindset. Those with employee mindsets have the opportunity to work within our Sapling Store, while those with entrepreneurial mindsets chose work on creating/refining their own business. We have three opportunities this year to immerse ourselves in business and students get to shift from employee to entrepreneur with their own business if and when they feel ready to do so. On Monday we also covered what a vision and mission is for business with examples straight from our school and existing student businesses.

On Tuesday afternoon we created our school store logo, product list, and refined our vision and mission. We put this information together and made a simple poster to advertise to the church community. Our school store has 10 products that we can create during our 5 weeks, so there are many roles to fill and new learning ahead. There were many questions about how this was going to work, and that information will be presented next week. We go step by step through a process of business creation that supports students to have a strong foundation to whatever they choose to create. Materials began to be assembled and organized for our products.

On Wednesday afternoon, we began making lip balm based on a simple recipe we found with substitutions based on ingredients we had in our dried herb selection. We chose foraged Wild Rose petals and Plantain leaves.

The space around our lip balm adventure was filled with paracord bracelet making from video tutorials and reading. It was a beautiful slow day, which is exactly what everyone needed. We ended our day with warm cookies and said goodbye from the front door due to weather.