apple picking (from october)

We had our first group going out and this, at a nearby apple orchard. We had all good intentions: collect apples from the trees, make pies or sauce, pick out pumpkins for carving. Instead, we got lost in a corn maze, split up by gender, me with the boys and our head of school with the girls, and we kept thumping into each other at all turns, so after an hour of this tromping, we joined forces and eventually, one corn-cut, several tired teddy bears (as my father might say), and a discussion as to whether or not a shoe would be an appropriate vessel to boil corn in (no, no absolutely no), we went back out the way we came in, and that's OK, because we're all still one piece, we're all still a team, a family, and though we didn't find our way straight through, we got to admire the strength of a corn stalk and its potential to impale a human (no, we didn't test that theory out).

Later, we carved pumpkins on the floor of our science area and the kids kept up with the goop and broke a few carvings knives and had an all-around lovely time.

As the elementaries, it was also our duty to host the schoolwide Harvest Festival, and we served this chicken with wild rice soup and zucchini muffins, the recipe for which I will share shortly. I'm pleased it went so smoothly, and amazed at how the crew of nine came together and divided the jobs and helped in singing and clean-up. It was our first go at such a thing as a cohesive group, and I love that breaking bread with the entire school just settled us more into a family-like feeling. We sang some school favorites and got to chat with some of the youngers, many of whom are siblings of students and offspring of guides.

narrative telling

Days after taking these photographs and I'm already missing this space.

The new school is a converted series of cottages in which there had been approximately six bedrooms per cottage, along with a kitchen and a living space. Right now, the two youngest clusters are each in their own kitchen / living space, whereas the elementary is making do with a handful of re-painted bedrooms until the summer demos gives them their very own swath of space.

It works though. There's still that beautiful light streaming in, still the hush of the diffuser, the quiet lamp and peaceful music as each student concentrates on making his or her own narrative. So many stories get told and retold, and there's already such a history to this building, made in love, being remade in the same.

My mother said she thinks the ghosts of the past children who lived here would be happy to see this transformation. I think she'd be right.

elementary in the woods

Today was outdoor photos with the Lower Elementary.

Dear Self: third graders are wise. If they suggest you ought to put on your boots, you maybe should say, oh dear, I wasn't thinking, instead of brush it off like a macha Minnesotan and say, I'm totally fine; I do this all the time. Because all that open space there? It's a crispy top you just punch through to powdery white and that gets into your shoes because they're shoes and also, wearing yoga pants? Rethink your next woods adventure attire please.

But if you do it again, and you will, do it with these guys. Because they know how to find a good climbing fallen log. I'm tempted to bring my pruners next time though with all the thorns on the bushes--I wonder what's wild and thorny and clinging? perhaps a wild fruit or buckthorn, which is, by the by, a wonderful invasive for the dye pot, if you are a dyer of fibers as I am sometimes to be--and peel them away. It takes some tromping on these paths, and the sun was just warm enough to keep us lingering.

As always, I end with two photos of my own here at school. I could not resist.