We put the finishing touches on our bird project before winter break.....we placed our birdbath, hung our feeders and our birdhouse on campus and spread plenty of black sunfowerseed for year-round birds of our valley. We read that this food provides energy and warmth for them!

This week we received the last piece we were needing to put into our bird habitat here at school!

We have and repainted the chicken tractor to use a shelter for birds who may want to build nests inside, we have our barley sprouts inside the classroom to feed to the chickens, and then replant in the spring once the ground thaws for food, and now we have our bird bath to provide water! Many thanks to MD Nursery, for generously donating the ceramic bath, along with two feeders and a bag of seed to help keep our resident birds happy and healthy throughout these frigid winter months.  We are excited to spread seed all around campus, and fill the bird feeders with seed and place them in special places at school. We read the Big Snow by Berta and Elmer Hader where an old couple help the resident animals stay healthy with special treats throughout the snowy months.

In other project news, our field guides are published, and came home with your student today so you can enjoy them too. Today we hosted the Land trust and presented them with their own own copy of our Field Guide! It was such an honor to have Exectutive Director Chet Work at our school.

This week, we worked on putting the finishing touches on our bird project. Please enjoy the following excerpt from David Sobel's Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities:

"As you stroll down the halls of your neighborhood school at nine o'clock on a Wednesday morning, you notice that something seems odd. Many of the classrooms are empty, you realize; the students are not in their places with bright, shiny faces. Where are they? If you could cast your gaze out beyond the school walls, across the community, you'd find them. In the town wood lot, a forester teaches tenth graders which trees should be marked for an upcoming thinning project. Downtown, a group of middle school students are collecting water samples in an urban stream to determine if there's enough dissolved oxygen to support reintroduced trout. Out on the school grounds, a few children are sitting on benches writing poems while another group works with a landscape architect and the math teacher to create a map that will be used to plan the schoolyard garden.... No, those bright shiny faces aren't sitting behind desks - they are all around the school, and out in the schoolyard and community, learning in a whole new way." (p. 1)