Weeks 8 and 9: Homesteading as Living History

As we begin to approach the end of our 10-week session, we are trying to fit in as much Homesteading study as possible! I'm hoping, though, that our study of self-reliance, living in balance with nature, developing ties to community and the land, and living a hand-crafted life, prove to be life-long pursuits for our group. I know I am hooked and keep thinking of ways I'd like to pursue this lifestyle further!

We began the month with a reading of the poem "November" by John Updike, relishing the contrast between our gentle Fall and the faster approach of winter in other climates. Adrianna's grandma mailed pressed leaves from her backyard, and Alden and Lydia's Uncle Kirk visited from New York and helped us build our log cabin model. Prior to building the cabin, the kids created a chart that identified the resources used in building by the pioneers: Natural, Human, and Capital Goods. They created a scale for their building project and built a wonderful sod-log cabin suitable for any fairy tale. Thanks to Kirk for bringing great structural and artistic elements to this project!

We incorporated pioneer history into our yoga practice, and collected plant materials for dyeing our wool (yellow from a CA native flower in the garden and red from locally-grown pomegranate).  The students exercised their active listening and mathematical skills as they sketched the layout of our fictional pioneer family's homestead through a directed drawing activity. They had to draw everything to scale after creating their own scale, and calculate the scale through mental math as they drew. . . and each child produced brilliant results!

 

With a donation of beautiful wool felt materials from Nature of Art, the kids created vibrant mini-tapestries with a Fall theme, and learned & practiced sewing by hand at the same time!

We also read a story from our Pioneer Sampler about the intergenerational history of an immigrant/pioneer family. The kids learned a colonial singing game about travelling by ship, and studied the passenger list of a real-life immigrant ship, including several young children, thanks to the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild, and listened to a fictional letter from a 12-year-old girl who travelled on the Mayflower. We started sketching our own Family Tree and discussed our own family histories of immigration and Westward Expansion. Finally, through college-lecture style note-taking, the kids created an integrated timeline/map of the settlement of the US from the time of the Pilgrims to the Spanish surrendering claim to the Pacific Northwest with the Florida Treaty. May I say again that I'm very proud of all the wonderful work the kids are doing?

Week 7: Spinning Wool with Guest Artist Susan Frommer

We had the privilege of spending an entire day with local artist and artisan Susan Frommer, who taught the kids and me how to spin wool into yarn using a drop spindle and a spinning wheel. We had recently read about sheep shearing and the cultural components of spinning in our Pioneer Sampler, so this visit was especially meaningful. After reading how pioneer girls had to prove themselves as exceptionally skilled on the drop-spindle before they were allowed to spin precious fleece on the spinning wheel, the kids felt (no pun intended) pretty special when they got to try out Susan's spinning wheel. As a teacher I was intrigued and humbled by the fact that the kids "got it" quickly (within a few minutes) on the drop spindle, whereas I struggled for hours before it finally clicked for me. Susan had to exercise a lot more patience teaching the teacher than she did with the students!

 

 

 

Last week we also celebrated Halloween, pioneer-style, with stories, songs, and games appropriate for the occasion. We also learned about "maple sugaring" & sketched the layers of a tree to better understand how the tree feeds itself and circulates sap, and how this can be tapped from a maple tree to make maple syrup. Our Halloween Festival included a costume parade, maple syrup snow cones, bobbing for apples (gross!), playing the pioneer game "knucklebones" (even more gross!), and another Indian pebble game.

Week 6: 2nd Guest Artist; Hard work & Simple Fun

We had another set of days full of inspired learning including the unexpected treat of another Guest Artist! Spramani E'laun, of Nature of Art, introduced our group to etching with her Colour Blocks which she makes from recycled crayons.

We finished reading The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh, and in response to the story we built a "lean-to" shelter with materials found in the backyard. We also gathered twigs to build a mini log cabin, thinking this would be an easy way to get a feel for building with natural materials as the Early American pioneers did. We discovered that sawing twigs is actually a lot of hard work, and the work of building a full-sized cabin with just an axe remains inconceivable.

 

Sarah Noble talked about playing pebble games with the "Indian" children during her extended stay with them, and these simple games still appeal to our kids generations later. The kids created an "Indian Pebble Game" by painting a set of 15 smooth pebbles with an X, O, or Z and placing them in a satchel. The simple game includes drawing a rock from the satchel in turns around the circle, and then the child with the most matching pebbles wins the round.The kids wanted to play the game again and again, and made up their own new rules as we played along. Another seemingly simple but actually quite challenging game was "leaf-catch" played between partners. I was refreshed to see how much fun our technologically-saavy kids can have with just a few rocks or a leaf.

 

We also enjoyed the simple relaxing treat of a stroll down the street for a picnic under the oaks and a bit of tree identification. We found a "mortero," or grinding stone in bedrock, that Native American women used for grinding seeds and acorns in centuries past. We admired some acorn granaries installed in fence posts by our neighborhood Acorn Woodpeckers. We identified the Coast Live Oak and the California Sycamore.

In honor of the changing seasons, the kids collected leaves from a variety of trees in their own neighborhoods and on our walk together. We studied the shapes of the leaves and drew examples of palmate, pinnate, lanceolate shapes as we discussed the features of leaves and how they support the tree's process of photosynthesis and water circulation.

We conducted a science experiment to answer the question, "Why do leaves change color?" The experiment was intended to capture the colors actually present in a green spinach leave through some simple chromatography using nail polish remover, alcohol and coffee filters. But some variable in our experiment failed and we were only able to capture the green of spinach.

Our leaf study also lead to a fun art project, using leaves and seed pods as stencils and for printing with tempura paints. The color wheels created in pie pans resulted in beautiful ephemeral art, too, as the kids mixed primary colors to make brilliant hues inspired by the colors of Autumn.

In preparation for our next Guest Artist, we read a story of "Sheep Shearing" from our Pioneer Sampler by Barbara Greenwood and tried our hands at finger-spinning as we made thread from a ball of cotton. This also became a lesson in the patience and hard work required of a pioneer family, including the young children, as our painstaking efforts resulted in just a few inches of bumpy yarn.

Finally, we experienced the patience and fun of writing with an inkwell and quill pen, pioneer style, as the students copied a pretty quote celebrating the beauty of Fall in their Main Lesson Books.

Did we really do all that --and more-- in just a couple of days?

Week 5: Nature Art with Our First Guest Artist

Last week we had a very special visitor, NYC-based artist Meghan Blair Fitzgerald, who lead us in delightfully creating art from nature in our own backyard. Meghan explained that she's recently ventured into new territory: after a year of living and painting in the Big Apple, she feels drawn to create art in parks and on hikes using found natural objects to sculpt and paint.  The kids explored conventional art elements like line drawing, contour, hue, and composition with unconventional materials such as sticks and dirt, rocks and leaves, acorns and cat-tails.

  

The artists transformed our backyard into a sculpture garden, featuring delicate stick sculptures, balanced rock sculptures, "windchimes" hanging from the oak tree, a river of oak leaves and a river of acorns, reed weavings, and a huge line drawing in the dirt. Check out our art gallery!

 

Week 4: Wonder and Awe in the Garden

I feel like writing one of those cheesy credit-card ads:

Weekend hours spent recruiting husband to haul straw bales and dirt: 6
Hours spent unloading dirt (alone and in the dark): 1.5
Money spent on bales, soil amendment, and organic seeds: $85
Patience expressed keeping children engaged in planting seeds on our last hot day: Maximum
Mornings spent hand-watering garden (so far): 21
Sound of wonder and awe as children discovered their first sprouts:  Priceless.

On Thursday morning the kids ventured to our straw bale garden to check on it and sprinkle with water. I had to forgo my plan to have them do an extension exercise on measuring and tallying--they were so delighted and enthralled by the new growth emerging from their garden beds that I had to stand back and relish their awe and wonder. It seems a rare thing these days to get kids excited by something that doesn't involve beeps and flashes or at least their best buddy. I wish I could have captured their voices as they discovered the tiny leaflets emerging from their very own garden beds.  (A note to any teachers who may read this: if you have the budget, provide each student with their very own plot. It makes all the difference to have each child feel a sense of ownership of their own seedlings.)

Other highlights of the week: We're continuing to work on musicianship through a game exploring the rhythms inherent in our names, and this week we added melody. (See if your child can sing you the "teasing melody" found in most children's songs over the centuries.)  We started a new chapter book about a colonial pioneer girl, The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh, and the kids wrote diary entries imagining they were either Sarah or her father. While in the garden we talked about what caused the seeds to sprout (water and warmth) and then through a Q&A exploration the kids concurred on a plant's goal (besides producing food for us or wildlife): survival of the species. The kids enjoyed a scavenger hunt, finding seeds throughout the backyard. We examined enough seeds in the open air to discover the four primary methods of seed dispersal: wind, carried by animal, weight, and explosion.

 

Back in the classroom, we examined all of the seeds collected and separated them into these categories as we tallied each type of seed. Some of the seeds required animated debate before the kids agreed whether their primary method of dispersal was wind or weight, explosion or animal, etc. We were surprised that despite all the acorns and cat-tails collected, most of the seeds fell under the explosion category.

Finally, I gave the kids a pile of materials and no directions except one: work together and figure out how to make a scarecrow. They rose to the challenge and made a scarecrow with striking resemblance to Kris Kiler! (Thanks to the Kiler family for donating the wardrobe).

Don't tell the kids, but this morning I watched as a Black Phoebe landed first on the scarecrow and then in the middle of the garden bed, where it scurried about for several bites before I chased it away.

Highland Learning Studio kids rock!

Week 3: Pioneer Spirit! Planting our First Crops!

The kids had plenty of Pioneer Spirit this week as we continued to explore and enjoy new territory together at Highland Learning Studio. The cooler weather (finally!) invited us outdoors more, for games of elbow tag and foursquare or catch with our new playground balls.

The kids enjoyed the challenge of a cumulative memory game, in which they took turns adding in alphabetical order what they would take in their wagon trip West: "I'm going west, and I'm taking Alexander, a barrel, cloth, a dog, Elex . . . hydrogen, ice cream . . . a lantern, a monster, Nick . . . a quill, a rabbit, a super saturated solution, tar, a unicorn, a vest, worms, a xylophone, yarn, and a zoo." We read a great picture book together, Going West by Jean Van Leeuwen and Thomas B. Allen, which describes the emotional rather than historical journey of a family leaving behind "civilization" and their first year of settlement in the American prairie. The kids then wrote a packing list for their own trip West in which they had to imagine what they would take in their covered wagon and what they must leave behind. Okay, this was a creative writing assignment and it showed. The kids later put their imaginations to further use as they acted out a role-play game of pioneers during free time.

We worked together to make Crop Harvest Planning tables, in which we used mathematical reasoning rather than counting with a calendar to complete the table. The students organized the information by crop name, days to harvest, and calculated expected date of harvest for each crop we will plant in our garden. Thursday afternoon ended with an art project, in which we recycled old spices (including some from the 1950s that I inherited!) into new pieces of "spice glitter" art.

For part 2 of our garden planning, the students drew diagrams of their individual straw bales and selected up to 3 crops to plant in their bale. They created a scale (1 inch = 1 foot) to map out the proportions of their bales and used corresponding measurements to plan how many plants could grow in each bale. They used skip counting or division to map out their planting, then made labels from yogurt containers to identify the crops in the garden.




After cultivating each bale and setting out seeds, they worked together to spread topsoil & compost over their bales and then watered with compost tea made by our very own worms (with student help).

Yes, we had to add some store-bought compost, but we enriched this with our worm castings and as much home-grown compost as we had available. We added a compost heap to one side of the straw bale garden, so that next planting season we'll have more home-grown compost to use.







Watering with our compost tea that steeped all week. Yum!












We also found time for cleaning the schoolhouse together, drawing, and playing a variety of math games, including tangrams (geometry), Countdown, and Totally Tut (both arithmetic operations games).

Week 2: Welcome Fall; Pioneer Measurements

This week we welcomed Fall with poems and songs and a new seasonal nature table, although the weather hadn't indicated a change of seasons yet (unless you consider the wildfire, our Southern California fall seasonal event). Our two days were packed full of learning opportunities as we continued to learn more about pioneer life and apply it to our lives as modern-day "homesteaders" forging new territory in education. We read stories about school days in rural pioneer areas and about milking time on a pioneer farm. We learned the various methods of measuring pioneer-style and compared measuring things according to thumbs'-width, by hands and arm-span versus feet and inches. We measured each kid's height and then the kids worked with partners to make a table and record measurements of various classroom objects with both pioneer measurement and standard measurement. We expanded on this on day 2, including mathematical notation, as we measured our new straw bale garden beds and made a diagram of an individual straw bale in order to plan our planting (which will happen as soon as the weather cools!) We also extended our science lessons on properties of matter and crystals with experiments in making hand-made butter and ice cream!

Laurun volunteers to take a "pioneer measurement" in our new Straw Bale Garden as students record standard measurements.

Singing the pioneer-children's butter chant,
"Come, butter come!
Come, butter come!
Peter standing at the gate,
waiting for a butter cake,
Come, butter come!"

Yummy fresh butter--well worth the wait!

Making Steve Spangler's "Rock & Roll Ice Cream."
It really worked!

We explored how salt crystals affect the melting/freezing point of ice crystals and made it possible for our ice cream churns to roll within moving ice.














Quiet time in the Pottery Studio: Read, Write, Draw, Create!  Some students chose to make each other or their teddy-bears "friendship bracelets."