November 29, 2011
Building Fences
The weather has held out and this week and last week were spent on the land clearing and putting up fences. We have a beautiful little spot with a lot of diversity to build on. Many students have claimed land in or around the stream. Last week some of those up stream began building bridges by way of dropping large branches across the stream. Homesteaders down stream were none to pleased about this! When the weather turns and class must be indoors I am sure this will be a topic at town meeting. We were joined by a new student last week and now our number is up to 25! Eighteen boys and seven girls.
At the start of class today I reminded them of what we are trying to accomplish. It has felt like the kids are only putting up fencing to appease me. I let them know that the boundary strings will be coming down and the purpose of the fence is to be able to recognize their land when the winter is over. I think my pep talk had the desired effect because students were a bit more focused today.
The group of seventh graders who are calling themselves a clan found a bunch of beer bottles and cans on the acre, they proceeded to build "Beer-Henge" with these. When I told them the school probably wouldn't approve of them playing with old beer containers they promised that they would not touch them anymore.... only worship at the site. Oh my! I suppose it is a good thing there is such a lack of over site.
We did not have any fifth graders today as they are on a field trip. Ours days outdoors are numbered. I think next week will be the last class to work on the land until the spring.
No comments:
Post a Comment