Beautiful art

 

The students made two brightly colored shape paintings and wove them together to create these masterpieces.

Birch trees in winter inspired these beautiful paintings. 

Winter fun

 

We are sad that all of our field trips had to be canceled due to the pandemic, but we still seem to find new things to explore each day. 

The girls were investigating the best way to separate the seeds from birch catkins before Z begins his experiment on birch seedling growth. They found a productive use for homemade paper fans.  

Mabel the guinea pig is visiting us this year. She was laid off from her usual class pet job due to Covid closures. 

We learned about estimating time while completing floor puzzles. 

Staying cozy and playing in their new fleece ponchos and hooded scarves. 

Pretending with the confetti balloon

These two love their rainbows

Balloon fun in the playroom

We had to change our protocols for Covid, but the kids still enjoyed building their graham cracker ginger bread houses. 

PJ day 

The pleasure of a mixed age group is highlighted when everyone (ages 5-12) sits down to play a game together without any input from the adults. 

The chickens have been enjoying a variety of gourmet meals made of veggie scraps, seeds, worms and other delicious ingredients. 

Fall 2020

We're a bit behind on documenting our adventures at Double Creek. Things have been a little different with the pandemic, but we have been busy exploring, learning, and having fun. The adults spend a lot more time cleaning and disinfecting and those beautiful smiles (and missing teeth) are hidden under masks, but we are glad to be together.

The kids scripted and made props for a play. 

Mud and other natural materials make great "food" to sell.

The kids explained that the best way to make mud was the use a stick and break up the fine soil. These four were working on the project together. 

Look what B and T built!

Many families skipped trick-or-treating this year, but we still enjoyed costumes at Double Creek.

Dry ice makes a spectacular demonstration of phase change.

We used the dry ice for a lesson on how your breath carries with and without a mask. The kids saw some concrete evidence that their masks were doing something. 

All those educational toys and it always comes back to the cups.

We went for a leaf walk in the neighborhood and made lanterns with the pressed leaves. Their beauty was hard to capture in the light, but you can see how amazing they looked with their LED candles. 

Z was the proud winner of our typing contest. The older class is building some strong keyboarding skills!

Exploring outside on a particularly wet day

Timber!

January 12th brought two and a half inches of rainfall to our area and late that night two giant trees fell over. We were very fortunate that they did not harm any buildings, but they did smash right through Fishing Bridge. 

The smaller of the two trees that fell is an 80-year-old fir. 

 

Here is the same tree on a nice sunny day a few years ago. 

Looking down the hill toward the bridge.

Here are some pictures of the bridge before the tree fell (the bridge was under construction here, so there are no rails yet).

On the bridge a few weeks ago

Here we are exploring the newly remodeled bridge

The tree landed on the ramp that goes up to the bridge and smashed right through the middle of the span. 

   

The larger tree that fell was farther from the school, right down next to the stream. The massive root ball pulled up creating a new pond. 

The massive trunk is so heavy that it half buried itself in the mud when it fell. 

The kids measured both trees. The smaller one is 134 feet and the big one, shown below, is 148 feet!

        

The smaller tree pinned down several vine maples and blocked the path down the side of the property, thankfully Uncle Scott came to the rescue. Scott skillfully removed rounds so the vine maples to stand up again. He also cut the trunk right at the base allowing the root ball to fall back into the ground. Thank you, Scott!

Michael, Tobin and the rest of the crew also worked on clean up. Thanks, team!