Woodchip Pile

Summer - it seems like spring was just arriving and now summer has already started moving into fall. The air seemed to snap this morning like leaves underfoot. The trees are holding onto their green leaves though, even if many flowers are fading by the pond.

Today was all about working with the woodchip pile. Why don't bees live in woodchip piles? Why do they like to live in trees? Well, old dead trees have nice solid walls. That makes a nice home for bees, or perhaps hornets. An old dead tree is one big piece of wood with a nice hole in the middle, while a woodchip pile has lots of little pieces of wood but no holes to make a bee's door. The woodchip pile looks like one big object, but it is really lots of little objects. That is why a woodchip pile comes apart easily with a pitchfork, while a dead tree does not want to budge, even if a tractor tries to move it. And if a tractor bumps or tries to move a dead tree with bees or hornets in it - Watch Out! They can sting. Remember how they chased Uncle Phil? Don't drink the mug of juice that we left outside yesterday - there's a bee in it! Bees like to eat things that are sweet. But that bee did not realize that she would fall into the juice. Poor bee.

Today and yesterday we used wheelbarrows, pitchforks, shovels and rakes to transfer woodchips from the pile to the path. The path looks so beautiful now with new woodchips spread all over it. Soon we will have a much easier time taking out the compost.

First Day at the Beach

The beach opens up into the big blue everywhere. It's fun to be in the water! We love it! Look at the sand. All the little stones are different colors - red, blue, grey, brown. The lifeguard tells people what to do, and keeps watch to keep the people safe. What if there were no lifeguard? That would be fun because we don't like to be told what to do. But that would not be safe. It wouldn't be fun to be in trouble with nobody there to help us. What if we bumped our heads and couldn't swim? A lifeguard has a job to do. Maybe one day some of us will become lifeguards. And tell the swimmers what to do. Until then we will just have fun at the beach.

Oh! Look at those clouds. They are dark. That means it looks like rain. The wind is picking up and blowing more. All the people are packing up. The children and mamas and daddys and grandmas and grandpas. It's time to wash our feet in the shower. How does it turn on? Push the button and water comes out. This is fun too. Bye bye, beach.

Splitting wood

Outdoor activities rule the roost when the weather cooperates. Today we learned about splitting logs.

A huge tree fell across the road a few weeks ago, and it's gradually been disappearing into woodpiles, firepiles, but most of it has been languishing by the side of the road waiting to be split. Well, today was the day. Uncle Phil came with the neighbor's hydraulic splitter, attached to the farm tractor. The wedge went through three foot diameter logs like butter. Everyone got to take a turn at the splitter, and we all drank lots of water afterwards.
Its hard to imagine how heavy trees really are when they stand so easily above us.

After the tree fell, it knew immediately that the end of its life had come. The leaves shrank and sank sorrowfully. The tree had rotted at its base, probably over many years, and the strong winds of our recent storms simply took it down. We were lucky that it did not fall on our building. A visitor actually watched it fall from his seat inside. It slowly started to topple, hesitating, then suddenly continued into the crash, decisively.

We will use it for firewood next winter. And the stack of newly split wood to the east is quite beautiful right now.

Springtime has come so quickly and we have been so busy here at the Farwell School. There's simply so much to do and see now when the weather's so warm and lovely. Everytime you turn around, the plants seem to grow by the foot.

New baby animals appear each week. Geese nested and hatched a flock of goslings in the south pond. On May 18 we spotted a newborn fawn and its nervous attentive mother - she seemed to be pretty young herself, and kept leading the fawn across the road. Mallard ducks hatched a batch of ducklings, and the ubiquitous robins have nests here and there, including one over our west deck. The babies from that nest just learned to fly, and we found one preening its scraggly feathers outside the window.

Toads bring friendly energy to visit when we find them. We can pick them up and feel their bumpy skin before letting them go again. We found a couple Mole Grasshoppers and kept them in our Bug Habitat for few days.

Our baby mollies are still small, but growing too. It's hard to keep the tank filled with water. Why does it evaporate? Why do we get thirsty? Where does all the water go?

Wood Ducks

A flock of wood ducks arrived today and settled in a tree near the south pond. They may be looking for a place to nest, as one of them explored the fat raccoon's hole in that same tree. It is a funny sight to see ducks in a tree. The females are the same color as the bark.

The robins look for food outside our window. They are very puffy and fat. Snow is still here, but only on the north side of each tree at the base.

Music

Making music makes us happy! Pick a ukelele and belt out a song. Any old song. Make it up. Stomp your feet. Grab a drum. Run and jump and hum and sing and run. Stomp your feet. Jump on a trampoline and feel the beat. Squeak, squeak, squeak, it's hard to blow on a recorder, hard to blow it low. Drumsticks slap the edges. The earth bell clicks. Shhh. Silence. Pow! Music. Whoo hoo, sing a song about the day, hooray!

Birds

Spring is definitely coming. The red-wing Blackbirds have taken up residence in the pond. You can see them perched precariously on the reeds. It's a beautiful sight.

Large flocks of blackish birds pass through here regularly. We don't know what they are yet, but are guessing blackbirds, starlings or small crows?

The crows are here of course. Also the pair of red-tailed hawks.

Another large bird flew over the southern ponds today too. It looked like a hawk but had a much smaller tail than the red-tailed hawks. Could it be a vulture? The binoculars will tell the truth.

In the past day we also spotted robins, woodpeckers and an unknown bird flew into (i.e., hit) one of our windows. It did not do us the favor of sticking around for identification, however.

Questions

Everyday, lots of questions come up while we are working, playing, walking and driving. Some relate quite specifically to our surroundings or current activities. Other questions we've just been pondering for a long time (those usually get asked for several days in a row, or on random days over a few weeks). The answers to these questions often can be easy to understand, but frequently just not very satisfactory. That usually means that we need to keep talking about it and do some more research.

On our blog, we are going to start posting topics that we want to keep thinking about and research later - we will label them as "Questions."

Some questions that we'd like to answer:

Q: How does sound come out of the radio? How do radio waves move through the air? How do they come into the radio?

Q: Does God have eyes? How can God be bigger than us but still inside us? Is God inside a tree?

Q: Who builds the highways? Why do they build highways?

Nature

Birds
Birds come in different colors and make different sounds. A bluebird has a black beak and a blue face. A red-wing blackbird has a black face and red wings. Many birds have names that suggest how they appear or act. For example, a woodpecker pecks wood, and a catbird sounds like a cat.

How can we look more like birds? Face paint crayons! Let's turn our noses into beaks and draw feathers on our faces. A big towel held behind our back turns into two great big wings that we can flap to fly as we run around.

Baking

Chocolate Cake

First we got a big bowl. Eggs went in the bowl, and oil, and water. Then we added cake mix. We greased up the pan. We mixed it with a spatula then put it in the pan. Then we put it in the oven.

What happened to the cake while it was in the oven? It got bigger! It's done! We can't eat it right away because it will be hot.

Wild Nature Friends

We have many friends in nature around here. So far we have seen:
• Deer (including bucks and fawns)
• Chipmunks
• Skunk. We knew a little skunk with a broken leg and brave spirit, but we have not seen him much since the snow came.
• Flies. We have not seen any this winter. But probably will soon.
• Red-tailed hawk. The pair of red-tail hawks like to circle the field and look for mice.
• Frogs live in the pond.
• Raccoons.
• Heron. Hopefully he will come back in the spring.
• Coyotes. Coyote footprints show up in the snow. Coyote scat is full of fur.
• Grasshoppers.
• Woolly Bear Caterpillars. We had two named Georgia and Linda. We want more caterpillars.
• Opossum. They play dead so something won't chase them. We saw an opossum on a tree by the trail.
• Squirrel.
• Mice. Field mice like to live in the basement in the winter.
• Shrew.
• CORRECTION! MUSKRATS! What we thought were beavers are Muskrats. [Beaver. It looks like there are beavers in the pond. We see mounds of grass that look like beaver dens. But we have not seen any beavers yet.]
• Woodpeckers. They peck holes in trees. They are looking for insects to eat.
• Mosquitoes. They come in summer and in the fall.
• Birds. Chickadees. Crows. We need to learn more birds, but there are lots of birds around.

Sun, Nature, Drama

The Sun
The Sun gives the earth light and warmth. Why does the sun appear in different places in the sky? Why can't we see the sun sometimes? Why is it dark at night?

Outdoors in Nature
Ice forms when it is cold outside. Sometimes ice is clear, sometimes it is cloudy. What does it mean when you can see water beneath the ice?

What is the difference between a live tree and a dead tree? Why is the dead tree crumbling on the inside? The dead tree has tiny holes on the inside, and a different live tree has holes on the outside. Woodpeckers like to look for insects in trees. Insects make holes in the trees and the woodpeckers make holes looking for the insects when they peck with their beaks. Can insects hurt us? Do we we eat insects?

Music
What different sounds can you make with a stick on a dumpster? It sounds high in some places and low in other places. You can click, drag and bang the stick. Can you imitate the sounds? Can you make a song with the stick and your voice? What happens when you bang the stick on the tree?

Drama
A lost boy in the woods has a magic stick. He uses this stick to turn himself into a witch. He uses the stick to turn others into cats and bats. He uses the stick to turn the cat into his mama, and she looks for her lost boy, who turns into a witch. He turns her into a cat and then he turns himself into a kitten and then they both go home and drink hot chocolate.

Art, Science, Craft

Art - Color
Some colors are made out of combining colors. We worked with an interactive color wheel to see the relationships between colors. For example, what's green + blue? Red + yellow = orange. What about green and gold? Some colors are named after minerals, such as silver and gold.

Science -Solar System
The Earth and Sun are interesting counterparts. The earth revolves in a counterclockwise direction around the sun. The dark parts of the earth are experiencing night, while the bright parts in the sun are experiencing day. Online animations show the earth rotating on its axis while revolving around the sun, and display many lights that are visible from space at night - especially bright over the USA and Japan.


Craft Project - Stamping
Adding water to the stamp pads makes the stamped ink darker. Where does the water go when you add it to the sponge?

The Farwell School

The Farwell School is a small private school devoted to nurturing each child's unique talents and interests in a natural environment of joy and discovery.