Dear Families,

Tomorrow, there will be a visitor at the school who will be sharing his crystals with us. John Gibbon, a long time family friend of Stephen’s and mine, has been dealing in crystals for many years. He will be showing the children a variety of crystals and talking about them. Afterward, we will be growing both sugar and salt crystals.

This goes along with the children’s interests in rocks and crystals at the school as well as our emergent topic that we will be discussing for the next few weeks. It could roughly be called “Very, very old things that are related to the earth.” We have been talking about the solar system, rocks and crystals, dinosaurs ( which we will be expanding on more next week ), and bugs that have been around since prehistoric time, aka cockroaches.

Paralleling the “earth” study has been the garden and bird action. We harvested our potatoes and the kids have decided to steam some and make mashed potatoes with the others. The sugar snaps are a big hit so we will have that snack tomorrow. We planted more radishes and are also starting carrots. The radishes are so satisfying as they have started to sprout after

less than a week. The sunflowers are starting to develop their flowers. Sweet basil has become a favorite snacking treat amongst some of the kids. Tomatoes are soon to go in. So do the green beans.

Above the sunflowers is the bird feeder filled with bird seed and sunflower seeds. Since we put it up last week, we have been visited by many birds of several different species. We are learning that the ones in the same species don’t fight about the food but the different ones do. They tell each other about it with bird talk and some amazing body language. We have imitated them as they stick their tails up and waggle their bodies back and forth. We are averaging about 1 1/2 cups of bird seed a day.

We put up a hummingbird feeder but so far, no action. We wonder if they would come because we talked about how we only saw birds. We are going to plant a Mexican sage that they really like and see if that brings them to us.

Teacher transition went well with Allison on board and Melissa shifted to afternoons; the kids seem comfortable with everyone.

Happy April,

DeborahTweet