First Weeks at Fiddleheads 2019

Hello Everyone,

It's been a wonderful first couple of weeks at school. Everyone has been doing really well getting used to a new routine and getting to know new friends. A lot of our time and energy has been spent on those pursuits, but we have definitely been enjoying exploring our current theme of squirrels too. We have gone on some squirrel observation walks, were we found evidence of squirrels feeding on pinecones. We see them walking the edges of the fence in the back yard with acorns in their mouths. We've been playing a lot of squirrel games, where we make a home under a bush, practice climbing trees, hide pinecones for the winter, and sometimes hide from the hawk. We pretended to make a drey and got cozy in there together like squirrels. We practiced balancing like squirrels, and teacher Arielle made a homemade squirrel tail so that we could feel what it feels like to balance with a tail. We've been hiding acorns with special gold stars on them at the park all week, and we've been checking the next day to see if we can remember where we hid them, like squirrels must do. Sometimes we can find them, sometimes we forget, also like squirrels. Sometimes we know where they were, but now they are gone, and we can pretty much count on some real squirrels having found them before we could.  We've been learning a squirrel poem. On cooking day we cracked peanuts in the shell, and put them in a bowl until we had enough to make homemade peanut butter. We also made bread to put our peanut butter on, and had homemade peanut butter toast. In our time in the park so far we have also encountered various lovely mushrooms, sticks, seeds, leaves, lava rocks, mossy logs, spider webs, insect eggs, and so many other wonderful things to observe. We hear bird calls, we hear squirrel chatter, we feel the wind and weather.

Thank you so much to everyone who has brought in fruit, berries and herbs for snack! It feels like such a blessing to receive bags of produce and berries and herbs. We have a bunch of fruit leather going, with pears, apples, and asian pears and I made some homemade raisins and dried figs, and we have some lovely mint and elderberries that I have dried for tea. It takes about half a bushel of fruit to make enough fruit leather for a week at school, so keep it coming if you've got it.

Thank you everyone for sending your precious children to our little school so that we can have these beautiful explorations and adventures together and create this special community.

Being a squirrel!