Wonderful Wednesdays! Our second day of Singing Nettle Forest Stewards (SNFS), September 18th, was also successful !

The photo above features the Artists Conk(s) from our first day of SNFS that we wrote on! Now they are on display in front of our building! 🙂

We had a quiet and slow morning to start our day, reviewing Spanish conversational phrases and questions such as, “pontela!” (put it on), “cometelo!” (eat it), “¿Como te llamas?” (What’s your name?), “¿Como estas?” (How are you?), etc.

We had a new steward join us today! We talked about our learning program SNFS and its boundaries, and what each day is geared towards. Tuesdays are music! Wednesdays are Spanish! And both Tuesdays and Wednesdays are also sprinkled with CORE subjects too. 🙂 We take CORE subjects and apply them in-the-moment in nature! 🙂

Our stewards are getting ready to go on a hike! Before our hike, we played underneath this beautiful tree by passing a hacky sack between us and asking different questions in Spanish to the person we tossed it to, such as, “what did you eat for breakfast this morning?” “¿Qué comiste en el desayuno esta mañana?”, or, “what is your favorite color?” “¿Cuál es tu color favorito?”, etc. Each person had to answer or reply back in Spanish! We also played a fun game called “duck duck goose” in Spanish, called, “pato pato ganso”, or, “pata pata gansa” (we changed it to Female “a” at the end because all of us in the class today are girls!). Then we changed the game to “gata gata perra” or “perra perra gata”, which means, “cat cat dog”, or “dog cat cat”! We had a fun time. We also watched the bees from a distance with binoculars! From our games and time outside, we had several words that we wanted to look up using a Spanish to English or English to Spanish dictionary, such as, “maple tree”, “toad”, “throw”, “pancake”, etc.

Ms. Chris taught us a great way to remember many different things or words together, such as imagining different scenarios with the words or things that we had to remember. For example, in our class and in the photo below, we imagined a toad on a lily pad, and the pond he was in was filled with maple syrup, and he was holding binoculars and throwing pancakes at the maple tree on one side of the pond!

The photo below shows what we have been reviewing and learning today, even featuring a drawing on a piece of paper from one of our stewards of the scenario we imagined as a class (do you see the lily pad?)! 🙂

In the photo above, we also talked about perspective and how important it is to learn perspective in Spanish (since there are words in Spanish to describe different things, but they are actually the same word), and in our society! Ms. Chris held up a penny, and asked the stewards to describe what they were looking at. “My side has a head upside down!”, “my side has a building on it!”, etc. She explained to the class that, no matter what perspective or idea we believed, it can all be reduced to the same idea or concept (very Buddhist notion too of interdependence and nothingness)!

After our philosophical talks, we went out and hit the Gateway Trail! We came across vultures in the sky, grasshoppers hiding in the grasses or leaves, and a dead squirrel (unfortunately). We noticed on the deceased squirrel how quickly iridescent flies and other decomposers (such as ants) were acting in order to complete the circle of life. We put 2 and 2 together and realized that maybe the vulture was circling and hovering so low to carry out the circle of life too for the squirrel!

On our hike, we saw horse pies and took observation into the diet of a horse. We also came across, something very interesting……

Perhaps an owl pellet or coyote scat! We used two sturdy twigs to pry apart the pellet or scat and saw a lot of fur… it looked like bunny fur. Then, a steward pointed at something sharp!

In the photo, I’m holding up a one part of the pellet / scat with the claw of an animal!

Close up of the claw! Next week, I think we’ll be doing some owl pellet or coyote scat dissection! I’m hoping that the specimen is still on the trail! Maybe we will incorporate some scat singing (we will learn more of how to scat musically!). 🙂 I would consider ourselves scat (wo)men! 🙂

After we arrived back to our home base from the hike, Ms. Chris wrote the Spanish names of different objects around the classroom on post-it notes, and stewards had to place the post-its on the correct objects! Here is one of our stewards placing a post-it note on the “piano” (piano in Spanish), or “keyboard” (teclado).

The photo below is our story time, in which one steward from the class was reading the story in Spanish (it is a kids book in Spanish), and then Ms. Chris translating it into English! 🙂 It was about an elephant sharing ice cream.

What a joyous day! I can’t wait for what next week holds! Next week, we will talk about and explore different leaf patterns and how to use an identifying guide to help us learn about the flora in our area!

I love this photo of our stewards! It looks like an image or painting from The Secret Garden! Or an idyllic landscape painting of English pastures. 🙂

Take care & blessings always,

~Christine Shoemaker

Director, Learning Guide of Singing Nettle Forest Stewards, 501 (c) (3)

P.S. here is a photo of me pulling out an invasive (but fun and decorative) wild cucumber! 🙂 Wild cucumbers produce fun seed pods that are great for decorative purposes and are vining plants. (NOT edible at all). 🙂