Saplings Core October 7&8

Monday was a surprise day off and as a result, we did not introduce a new teaching this week, and are not likely to introduce a new teaching on a week with less than 3 days.

Tuesday morning we settled into our typical routine, learning about the story behind strawberries from "Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults". We continued through the morning working on our checklist. Math games are the reward for completing all tasks, or 5 out of 6 tasks in the morning. Today students got to see what happens when they do and do not complete their goals for the morning. It is always their choice and natural consequences ensue. Today one student got to play math games (chess) for the last hour with a partner, while another student did not.

Math focus for the day was on multiplication and division utilizing arrays to see what is happening and multi digit row multiplication with carrying. Our mini lesson was determining the high and low temperature for last year's temperature graph and adding that data to the legend on our new graph for this year. We also became familiar with the parts necessary on a graph to support understanding.

Language focus was on writing what student's imagine the field trip might be like tomorrow, as well as spelling list practice for our new list, and cursive practice.

Tuesday afternoon our focus was on feast planning, harvesting from the garden again, and lots of Zen Magic. Today our focus for Zen was two new somatic exercises, Brain Gym basics and a new project called Mantra Wreath. This has been introduced as a tool at school to override anxious thinking and focus on positive thinking <3

We shared some things that we tell ourselves in our minds, and had a discussion around whether or not we would feel comfortable saying these things to others, then we reflected on why it is OK to say them to ourselves. We worked through some deep thinking to find something that we could replace these statements with that were honest, positive and full of grace.

Our afternoon work was completed, a we enjoyed a cookie each.

Field Trip

The field trip was a lot of fun and a great time to experience our little school group interact with nature, one another and test their physical limits.

Courtney will have many pictures of our experience today that she will be sharing, so please remember to check out this week's Sprout post for that!

Have a happy and grateful weekend.