Science and The Body 10 - 12 year old girls and boys have begun a new unit.
We talked about plant medicine, drank peppermint tea, looked at the botanical name for peppermint.
We are figuring out plenty about what's okay to talk about. Is there anything that isn't?
The children made beautiful lanterns, lit candles, brought warmth and light to our process.
We practiced bringing awareness to the private, personal space we each hold.
After three weeks apart, it was wonderful to again be together.
KNOW students and their parents keep raising their own - our own - bar of excellence. Mostly by having the willingness to take on the difficult challenge of showing up, speaking the truth, continuing with the process even when it's really hard, and having fun in the midst of all this stretching.
If you think there are things teenagers and parents can't talk about, you haven't visited a KNOW class.
The girls began their new journals. We'll write in them each week. For our first entries we listed the names of all the girls in our class. Many of the girls made special drawings to symbolize each other's personalities.
We began writing our first haiku.
Continuing with our herbal study, we experienced different herbal waters on our faces, including chamomile, oats, and roses.
As always, we finished class with the girls' mothers joining for our final circle and song.
We had a lovely, gentle, thoughtful afternoon.
In Science and The Body, 10 – 12 year old students designed tree ornaments that reflect some of the work we’ve recently done together….!
Students figured out techniques that help calm our nervous systems when we are worried. These include breathing, focussing our attention, changing our physical position.
When parents arrived, we had a thoughtful conversation about experiences in our lives that have caused continued anxiety/scarring, and about experiences that have created memories that happily stay with us. We talked about how we can learn to make choices that increase positive experiences.
Students checked books out from our small library.
Families left for home, new ornaments in hand.
Science and The Body students had a joyful time today, eating cornbread and drinking ginger tea with honey, all the while learning more and more about human anatomy and physiology. They got to laugh, discuss anxiety, practice reducing anxiety, and work on their fine memorization. Moms and Dads joined us, as usual, for the last part of class. Kids excitedly shared what we’d been up to, helping teach their parents stuff parents might not previously have known!
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.
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!
Amy, brilliant artist, mother of one of In This Circle's girls, spent Saturday afternoon guiding the girls through the process of designing their wall mural.
This included looking through many art books, drawing sketches, weaving ideas together, learning how to work with paint and brushes, and learning how to transfer pencil sketches to acrylic wall-painting.
The walls, in their beginning stages, are beautiful! The room, transformed!
Amy and the girls will return this-coming Saturday, to work on the next stages of their mural, which will include a bean tree, birds in nests, stars, a lake. They'll also teach me how to paint a flower on the wall, so it can join the flower garden.
All photos by Mateo Coffey-Loring.
KNOW students are brilliant, by any measure.
We begin each class sitting around the kitchen table, brewing up cups of tea, catching up on a week's worth of news.
Settling into dinner, we find our way toward our topics for the evening, often beginning with a concept or thought one of the students has been pondering. Often paper and writing implements are necessary for plotting out the structure of the idea.
After supper, we move into the comfort of the classroom, and the help of our large, wall-sized chalkboard.
We've been figuring out ways to get to the heart of our personal values. This past week, KNOW students interviewed one another, then shared the results of their work. It was interesting to recognize the similarities between students, as well as the ways students diverge.
We've continued to discern and develop vocabulary for our studies, and have begun to recognize some of the many reasons vocabulary is so important. As well, we're cracking the door toward understanding some of the limitations of our vocabulary.
When parents arrive, KNOW students pay attention to the energy in our classroom, consciously choosing an appropriate moment to invite parents to join in. We're acknowledging, and naming, changes that occur when parents enter the classroom.
We're creating our personal and collective ground. We'll have to name it.
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.
Yesterday was pretty darn dandy. Your children had no trouble finding our special forest spot. We were surprised to discover our impermanent leaf markers were indeed impermanent. We figured out how to thoughtfully communicate while we explored our very different opinions about where to create our forest shelter!
Well, my goodness, that was one cheerful lot of children! Many thanks for gifting me their presence today. We sat at the table and re-introduced ourselves, with our names and something special about our birthdays (Ruby's choice. Her birthday is Halloween!). We recognized that Amiel and Mateo were not with us today. Your children figured out all the flavors they recognized in our herbal tea: ginger (hot and spicy!), anise hyssop (licorice flavor!), and lemon balm (lemon!). We cut apples so they revealed their stars; something the children had asked me if we could do this week. We're continuing to figure out the beginning outlines of an apple's reproductive structure.
