The autumn season got so busy, gathering so many acorns and making so much pumpkin pie that we got behind posting new pictures here on the blog! So this is a big update, following our forest school adventures from September through December. What a beautiful beginning to our school year it has been! We began our school year with an Autumn Equinox celebration, creating an edible mandala full of autumn abundance, as an offering to the animals and insects sharing the land with us. Edible Autumn Equinox offering to the animals We followed the autumn season through all the abundance it offered: ra ..read more

Week 1: We got started by exploring our landscape, and gathering flowers, plants and grasses that we encountered on our journey to weave into a Y-stick, which we also harvested along the way. This activity helped us all orient to the land and season, noticing which flowers were blooming and where, what plants were in what life stage, and where they were located. We learned to identify them as friends asked questions about each beautiful bloom. We also used found fibers to learn cordage making, or the art of making rope from plants! But it was cold at the beginning of the week! We made a fire ..read more

Our Sprouts class has been hard at work on creating a miniature "fairy village" of many small house structures made of bark, grass, leaves, and any other available earth materials. This kind of play helps children become familiar with their environment, and gives them a sensory experience of place that is so important for feeling connected to the landscape and familiar enough to really observe and learn. During our craft time we made pinecone bird feeders to help the birds along on their migrations ..read more

We were so grateful for a visit from a beautiful young Cooper's hawk on Tuesday. They were on the ground eating a ground squirrel when we arrived, and stayed for the first couple hours into our class! Eventually they flew up to a nearby perch only about 20 feet up, and gave us an incredible view from all angles before flying off. Thank you Hawk! On Thursday we enjoyed a cozy crafting time with our fire while it snowed for part of the day. We rolled beeswax candles and decorated them. Always a favorite wintertime activity! The Saplings studied words starting with the letter B, so we told stor ..read more

Stars around us everywhere! We discovered the magic of slicing an apple to find the stars inside, and made apple star stamps with our homemade blackberry ink from earlier in the fall. There was lots of good teamwork this week too, building homes for some beautiful insect friends we found. Thinking about what insects need to live, what might make them happy, how they stay warm and dry, etc. are some of the best ways to inspire compassion and understanding of these small forest friends ..read more

Our favorite autumn activity at Earthwise is acorn processing. Acorn is an ancient staple food source wherever oak trees grow abundantly, but it takes some work to make acorns into human food. The busy, focused time of cracking each nut between two rocks brings peace and purpose to our little class. Together we crack, grind, leech and then cook with our acorn flour. Pancakes are a satisfying reward for so much effort! Throughout these weeks that we focus on acorn processing, we have acorn games, acorn math, and acorn harvesting to do, just like the squirrels and Acorn Woodpeckers ..read more

It's early October and the heat hasn't subsided yet! So we are spending our days finding shade and water, where the frogs and cattails live. We are finding so many frogs, much to the delight of our class. So many frogs that one area of the land has been named, "Frog Town." In perfect rhythm, our Saplings class studied words beginning with F this week and so we all practiced our "fox walking" too. One of our favorite fall crafts is making cattail or corn husk "people" that come to life and join us in our play. Cattails leaves are best harvested in the fall, after the plant's energy goes back d ..read more

We got crafty this week with the last of the season's blackberries. We gathered the juiciest berries still clinging to their vines, and added a few magic ingredients to make ink! After we had some beautiful homemade ink, we set to work making twig paintbrushes by chewing on the ends of maple twigs. Maple is a "long fiber" wood, meaning each fiber separates into beautiful "bristles" like a paintbrush after a little chewing. So we became beavers and chewed the ends of the twigs until they turned into paintbrushes, and then we finally got to paint ..read more

We are so happy to be sinking back into the autumn season with a new class! Our two classes, the Sprouts and the Saplings, worked together a lot this past week to build school community and get comfortable with our daily rhythm. For our first day, we hiked up to meet the beautiful Manzanita, whose berries can be crushed make delicious "sugar" with a little focus and effort. The older Saplings also studied words that start with M, like Manzanita, and created their own Mountains both on paper and with their hands. On Thursday we celebrated the Autumn Equinox with a beautiful edible Earth art o ..read more

Working with clay is by far one of our favorite autumn activities and our imaginations light up with the endless possibilities as we slowly coax our clay to take form in our hands. Our adventures take us to many magical places. Old fallen logs become houses, caves, and whole worlds while the children explore over, under, and inside. As the days get colder, we turn inward to our fire, learning how to take good care of the fire and also learning about the ways that fire can take care of us in return (like popping corn for a quick snack ..read more