Vocabulary and the forest.

WiseBodies Science and The Body kids took a unanimous vote on whether we should take ourselves out into the 65 degree weather, and on into the woods. Unanimous votes always win. We rolled a big brown tarp, folded a pink blanket, and shared the carrying as we made our way down the block and into the forest. Also along for the ride: our brand-new body book. And a handful of new words we said aloud along the way. We laughed. A lot. When we reached our forest spot, we noticed a ribbon one of us had tied around a limb, weeks ago! We also noticed a space marker, made from twigs and branches, also constructed and left weeks ago. Cool to have places that are known. We settled the tarp and blanket, took off our shoes, got cozy and listened to the first three chapters of our book. We had a good time. We yelled new words aloud, and all together. We learned how possible it is to get comfortable with new words by saying them aloud, together, and repeatedly. It was almost pitch black when we walked home. On the way back we stopped in at a neighbor's house, to practice saying one of our words aloud. When we got home, parents had arrived. We told them about our afternoon in the woods.

Second Trimester

Today Science and The Body children began their second trimester. We'll transition from Botany to the human body, studying the human reproductive system.

It was interesting to notice aloud how calm and focussed we've become. When asked how we had acquired this lovely state of being, Science and The Body students said it was a result of building Friendship, Trust, and Courage.

We talked about what the children believe are good qualities they have that are necessary for living a good life. The children decided that to have a good life it helps to be happy, friendly, nice, awesome, amazing, considerate, creative, artistic, musical, and sensitive.

We talked about qualities their families have that they believe are necessary for a family to live a good life. The children decided that families need to be nice, considerate, have fun together, stay together, take care of their bodies, eat food that's healthy, and help each other.

Following this discussion, the children realized that all these qualities are important to being WHOLE. They thought about how being WHOLE might relate to our study of the human reproductive system. We decided this will be an on-going conversation.

We talked about whether there are dumb questions. We took "Are boys and girls the same?" as an example of a question that might be dumb. On examination, we realized it wasn't so dumb, since it lead to an interesting conversation about whether "boy" and "girl" really describes everyone we know. We decided it didn't. We ended with realizing we needed to add "It's Okay To Ask Any Question" to our list of Ground Rules, since it's possible no question is dumb.

We began to explore our new book. In unison, we turned each page, reading aloud the title of each and every chapter. We got louder and more boisterous as we went along. Parents began to join us, adding their voices to ours as we went through our books.

The children figured out a hand gesture we can use to end each class, to celebrate our circle, our work together, and each other. It was a fun ending to a fine afternoon.

Great day, Science and The Body families!

Parent's Night!

Tonight is our first Science and The Body Parents' Night!

Parents always are encouraged to join us for the final 15 minutes of each week's class. It's great for us all to be together, for children to see their parents learning alongside them, for parents to be able to continue conversations at home, and for me to get to know whole families.

Parent's Night is a chance for parents to talk about whole sexuality education, to search out our fabulous sex-educator strengths, to practise parent-child conversation skills, and to make sure we have our facts all lined-up!

As we know, children learn most about human sexuality from their parents, at home. Parent's Night offers us an opportunity to increase our comfort level when talking with our children about all things related to human sexuality, so that our children grow up learning from the best educators around.