1/23/19

Another cold day!  The class survived their animal jobs... and I may be curing some of them of their desire to have a farm one day!  Each week, I talk to them about Farm News.  Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.  I always explain that life has ups and downs.  There are good times with happy, bouncy babies, eggs, growth, sunshine, and health... and then there are times that make you question you abilities.  Question your choices.  Question whether or not raising and loving these animals is worth it.  I told the class that I was not alone is these low times.  I began raising goats almost 20 years ago, and I have acquired many friends who farm.  We all go through moments like these.  To me, it is important to explain this to kids.  Often, we as a society try to sterilize

everything for children.  We try to present everything as if it is all guaranteed... as if it is always sunny... as if we, as humans, are entitled for life to be as such.  Farms offer the very real lessons that help to ground us, and I don't like to deprive my classes of these lessons.  So, today I explained that despite my best efforts, we lost a pig.  Yes, things like this happen... but it's never easy.  We cry, and we question ourselves, and we stay awake at night trying to make sure we look at things from every possible angle.  The kids have been reading the book, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.  In the book, the main character makes a very clear point.  He says that you HAVE to learn from your mistakes.  Mistakes happen... and it doesn't help to spend too much time in despair.  You have to act, you have to learn, and you have to do better.  This is what we also will do.  This is what I hope my students will learn and remember.

Ever since we read My Side of the Mountain, the class has been trying to make fire with
"flint" (actually, ours is magnesium) and steel.  Each of the books we have read emphasize the importance of fire when you are surviving in the wild.  Sometimes, the kids ask if they can work with their magnesium and steel during their free time.  Well, it wasn't until today that anyone had success!  One of my students noticed that, while she and her father were chopping firewood, the bark peeled back to expose the same little fibers as Brian found in Hatchet. "He moved to the trees. Where the bark was peeling from the trunks it lifted in tiny tendrils, almost fluffs." She brought in these fibers today, and the class was set on starting a fire! They worked together and were patient... and like in our book, we had the "Day of First Fire"!

The students did an excellent job with their journal entries on famous European landmarks! We learned about the Eiffel tower, Big Ben, Stonehenge, the aqueducts, the Colosseum, and more!

The class continued our paper bag activity on European countries. They worked on creating new bags and inserted their information notecards into the bags. Next week we will finish these and begin our in-class research activity! 

Our science lesson for today was on plant classification.  As we begin our unit on the plant kingdom, it is important for the kids to understand the difference between spores and seeds and between vascular and nonvascular plants.  We discussed these in class, and they added a page to their science notebooks that we will work with next week.  In order to drive home the fungi and moss lessons, we went on a little nature walk!  The class saw many examples of fungi and moss, and I was able to ask them questions that make them think.  HOW do you know this is a fungi and not a moss?  Why is this fungi growing on a log that is dead?  What does it mean to be a decomposer?  One of my students even brought in an example of a mushroom that was growing on a log near her home.  She remembered my important lesson about using gloves, and hopefully she will make a spore print of it for us to see!