Greetings Dear Families,
Thank you for volunteering and helping out during our Kingdom of Halloween festival. After a few years of hiatus it was great to welcome back one of our favorite festivals and we are grateful you could be a part of it.
We are now looking forward to our lantern walk festival which is just around the corner! The students are learning three new songs that we plan to sing during our lantern walk. We have also constructed our own paper mache lanterns using balloons and tissue paper. We collected leaves from our forest floor and decorated our lanterns with them as well. These will stay at school and be handed out during the walk; they will go home with your children after the walk. The lantern walk is one of our favorite events; we hope you can all join us! The lantern walk is also celebrated in Germany and France as Martinmas or Martinstag. The essence of this festival is to recognize the inner light we each carry. This inner light needs to be protected, as the light inside the lantern does, so it does not go out. We use this light to help each other in the darker months of the year. It is a reverent, contemplative walk. In understanding the importance of helping others, we also collect gently used coats of all sizes for One Warm Coat, an organization that provides coats for those who need them during the coming cold.
In the forest, we tried a new tea this past week. Ki Sam gifted us with Butterfly Pea Flower tea. The children were very excited about the tea being blue! This week we will add some lime and watch it change color. We also had lunch with a red tailed hawk on Thursday. Our special guest caught a squirrel and ate it only a few feet away from where we were having our lunch. The children were amazed and admired the bird from the edge of the platform. The hawk would also look up at us every now and then and that really stirred up lots of giggles. Talk about a lesson in life science!
Announcements and Reminders:
11/8: NO SCHOOL / election day / teacher inservice
11/8: Kindergarten lantern walk at 6:00pm
11/7-11/11: Coat drive for One Warm Coat
11/14-11/18: Non Perishable food drive for Never Alone food pantry
11/18: Thanksgiving luncheon (more info coming soon) and half day dismissal for all students
11/21-11/25 NO SCHOOL for Thanksgiving Break
As always, thank you for all that you do and for sharing your children with us!
Peace & Blessings,
Ki Fatima
