Winter Camp Update: Thursday 12/9
We visited a few places on the farm today that the students had not seen yet. The Medicinal herb labyrinth and the Old German houses. These houses once belonged to a German family that homesteaded on the land about 200 years ago. We talked about all the time and energy that would go into building a home from scratch, with basic tools and a lot of muscle & how their life may have been on a daily basis. All the kids agreed that if they had to build a house from scratch, it too would be small and easy to maintain. They would be willing to give up their playroom :-)
The Medicinal herb labyrinth is a spiral garden where we grow medicinal herbs. We got to taste some plants and talk about how plants are used as medicine. Nearby this special spot is an awesome Red Harvester Ant nest. We got to see their huge entrance to the nest and how they create paths through the grass, like a highway, and move through the meadow harvesting seeds and dead insects to bring back to the colony. Ask them about these ants…they are fascinating.
In this new area of the Farm, there were so many new trees to climb and the whole class could climb them together. The picture turned out adorable!
We played two really fun games today: Feesh and Foxes & Rabbits. These games teach us a lot about predator and prey relationship and give us some really good exercise.
I hope you enjoy the nature art - Christmas trees. Going on a hike to find three straight sticks of relatively equal length proved to be quite the task but fun. They all worked hard on those and were diligent on getting the sticks wrapped with the yarn just right.
We fed the chickens today and said good-bye to them. Some of the kids insisted that the rooster said good-bye back to all of us.
I do hope to see all of you again out at the Farm or even at the Vineyard. Here is more information about our upcoming farm school semester & more information on our organic veggie CSA program, if that interests you.
Happy Holidays!
~ Miss Tammy