Week 9, Marlborough School

November 8, 2011

Stringing up a town


Today's class was visited by Margaret, Owen, Pari and Mr. PeepT.  While we waited for our guests to arrive we had a brief discussion about our town meeting last week.  Namely, what do we do now that we have clans?  How is this going to work?  Several students commented that they didn't really like the idea, it will be too complicated.  The originator of the clan system let us know that each clan would have their own government and rules.  With the clan system, peeps would be expected to attend town meeting with their clan as well as the general town meeting with the whole village.  Hmmmm... extra meetings?  This plan is losing popularity rapidly.

After Margaret and Owen joined us we split the group in two.  Those who wanted an opportunity to work on peeps stayed inside and also helped our guests with some peep interviews.  The rest of the group went out to string up the "bog" acre that we selected last week.  I passed out the eight 100ft sections of string and twelve kids ran in as many directions... the only guidance I gave them was to not unravel the whole piece of string in one spot and that all of the pieces would need to tie together.  At the end of half an hour we had claimed our land!  It has a few dead trees lying on their side, a nice rock wall, a "river", some wetlands and plenty of forest for everyone!  We rejoined the indoor group and had a brief conversation about the clans again.  The majority of the class would like to stake their claim next week, claiming land is kind of complicated with the potential clan separations, a few would like to hash out the clans and government instead.  It will be interesting to see how peep land choices effect the clan situation.

The plan for next week will be to string up mini acres and begin fencing in the land.  If it is raining or freezing we will try to figure out this government.

As we haven't collected or painted any rocks for property markers, I need to remember to bring some numbered sticks in next week to identify individual lots with.