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February is a month of survival for many animals, especially when there is deep snow that prevents animals from finding food. February 19th is the Full Snow Moon and we will undoubtedly have more snow in February and on into March. We will also have warm, almost balmy days like we had yesterday (February 4th). With human beings survival and reproduction is supplemented with meaning. We live to discover meaning and we make meaning to live. It is crucial to take advantage of the changing weather and let the children connect with both the freedom of these mild winter uplifting days, and also face the elements and challenges, the snow, the ice, the leafless trees, the invigorating air, and continue to play outside. It is fundamental, not just an extracurricular activity, for children to learn about the ballings of snow that form beneath their boots, the bio fog that forms from their breath, the invisible contrails that follow in the wakes of their warm bodies as they navigate the ever-changing winter landscape of Southern New England. As the saying goes there is no bad weather just bad clothes. So it is REALLY important to stay true to our principles  as outdoor educators and families and: play in the snow, on the ice, and across the frozen ground, take advantage of a muddy ice pond that develop overnight,  and continue to explore your local “wild places” that are close at hand. In this way children can discover wild, hidden resources of wisdom, resilience and power in themselves and in the natural world.  See https://www.backwoodsmama.com/2018/12/5-reasons-kids-should-play-outside-in-the-winter.html

There is nothing like the clarity of the winter air and the stripped down landscape of forest, field and lawn to encourage awareness. It is easier to see certain birds like Woodpeckers, Great Blue Herons, Canadian Geese, Mergansers, Cardinals, Mourning Doves, Sparrows, and Crows because of the sparse vegetation. Cardinals will soon start making a mating fuss and we will be hearing from them more regularly. By the end of the month Red Winged Blackbirds will start to return to  the marshlands around the Mill River, one of the first signs of the coming Spring. Several of the children have notices the sparrows around the bird feeders fluffing their feathers to keep warm. Raccoons, Beavers, Foxes and Squirrels are all mating now and the mothers will give birth to their babies in the Spring. This key time in the life cycle of these “approachable”  mammals is captivating to young children and easily accessible through a variety of fiction and non-fiction books. Another invitation to the rich goodness of the earth is a growing awareness of animals’s presence in their absence: animal signs. Kids are fascinated by animals tracks and other animal signs and these become the stuff of a treasure hunt that leads children into a deeper intimacy with the natural world. Paul Rezendes writes in The Wild Within “As I became intimate with the language of the forest, I came to see that the world of nature and my own mind were inextricably linked. Nature inspired me to spend a lifetime asking deep questions…: What is thought? Where does the self end and the world begin? What is truth? What gives meaning to our lives.” See https://wildearth.org/blog/children-that-play-outside-in-all-weather-grow-up-resilient

The  stark silhouettes of the trees stand like animated giants in the muted grey, brown, blue and white color palette of winter. As we play in and among the trees, they become more prominent players and figures in our community landscape. The trees are our companions, our elders, the great connectors that define and link different different ecosystems, biomes, communities and homes. The children tend to notice the bark of trees more readily without the leaves on the trees and we have been doing lots of activities with sticks and bark. Yesterday I was showing some of the kids how you could make “flutes” out of the dried Japanese knot weed stalks. And we have made some great multi-media collages from felt and sticks. There is a Sycamore tree at school that is shedding its outer bark as part of its normal winter routine. As we picked at its “dead skin” ( which is a little bit more akin to “scabs” in the way the pieces of bark stick to the tree) the analogy, sometimes suggested by the children , sometimes offered up by me, between bark and our human skin energized the children’s engagement and interest in the tree. I try to encourage a copacetic body awareness between the children and all living beings.

This enveloping analogy between our bodies and the bodies of all living creatures and beings is the appropriate context for long term, thematic inquiries into the human body. The essence of skillful teaching here, as always, involves putting children’s, interests, questions, desires and needs at the center of everything, AND scaffolding and extending the children’s play and exploration in their ongoing experiences in the world. In this way the interconnections, interpenetrations and openings between self and world are revealed. We do this with: activities to sharpen their senses; taking field trips to the local grocery store; preparing tasty, healthy food in the kitchen that we savor, eat and appreciate; through stories, experiments, observations and movement investigating the skin, bones, muscles, nervous system, circulatory system, the digestive system, and yes, much to the delight of the kids, the excretory system. We use movement, music, dance, sports and the unparalleled opportunities provided by playing outside in all kinds of weather conditions, and in all types of terrain, to help them revel in their bodies, grow healthy and strong,  feel comfortable in their own skins and connected to the vast, intricate webs of energy and life.

No matter what you as the teacher are intent on teaching, children’s immediate, and urgent interests must be honored and acknowledged. Some of the teachers at our school noticed a wellspring of interest in space. While we can speculate on where this interest came from, certainly the fact that it gets dark earlier in the winter and the children have been getting glimpses of the night sky at the end of the day might have something to do with it, what’s important is that we catch their questions, honor their interests and help them explore, what is most intriguing to them, what draws them in. So they launched out on an extended inquiry into space, the sky, the earth, the moon, the sun, the planets,  the stars, flying, rocket ships, space exploration, astronauts, telescopes and astronomy. The big block area has been transformed into a place where the children can build rocket ships and pretend to be astronauts. Puzzles, stories, songs, murals, bingo games and models of the solar system help the kids become familiar with some of the basic phenomena of earth in relationship to the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars. Art materials are marshaled to make representations and models of the earth, sun, moon, planets and stars.  I will make some model rockets with the older kids and we blast them off in a local park with the whole school community as a culminating activity to our space explorations, but I hope the children are embarking on a much more  expansive vocation as skywatchers, human beings interested in the earth’s place in the cosmos.

Another way to think about the month of February is in terms of different holidays that are linked to both what is happening in the natural world and events that have a specific cultural significance. So February 1st is Imbolic, the traditional Celtic festival that celebrates the coming of Spring by marking the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. February 5th begins the Chinese New Year or the Lunar New Year which ties in with the work we have done with moon sticks and lunar cycles, and is rich with cultural significance. Several classrooms have invited parents to share different cultural/ family traditions like making dumplings, using chopsticks, hanging lanterns,  writing seasonal poetry, learning traditional songs and becoming culturally aware of how and why people celebrate the Lunar New Year. This is a great example of drawing on families as “funds of knowledge” and creating a reciprocal flow of knowledge and culture between school, families and community. We are making a papier mache dragon that will be ready for a celebration on February 15th right before our Winter Break. I make a bonfire in the fire pit and we will be reading stories, singing songs, and doling out hot chocolate to the kids as their families pick them up at the end of the day. We aim to create community based on the values of compassion, reciprocity, stewardship and humility ( See the PBS series Native America) . Hopefully in our small ways we are involved in creating a more inclusive calendar, a more inclusive canon, a more inclusive culture, and more peaceful ways of coexisting on this planet.

In this way we use phenology, the study of seasonal change and the regularly occurring events in the lives of people, animals and plants,  to ground our curriculum in the rhythms of the natural world and the earth; and at the same time use comparative anthropology, cultural studies and a culturally responsive pedagogy to acknowledge and honor  the artistic, scientific, and technological achievements of human beings, communicate across and through multi-cultural differences and similarities, and learn from one another as we expand the common archive of wisdom. By respecting each child’s native intelligence, innate curiosity, and individual learning journey we support all children in become active, critical, creative meaning makers in their own lives. Let’s continue to cultivate a basic openness and curiosity about the world, ourselves, and each other. Let’s use the invitations of the winter landscape to explore who we are, our place in the world and our responsibilities to one another and the earth.  Let’s do the work to make our relationships with the earth and universe strong, loving and kind. Before you know it we will be doing scavenger hunts looking for first signs of the spring, so let’s enjoy the winter while it lasts!

See you outside,

Charlie