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!