Greetings Turtle Families,

On Halloween we heard a story about a pumpkin house that was made by an Autumn Fairy for a kitty, a mouse, and a racoon. Following the story, each child cut out their own jack-o-lantern Pumpkin house from a folded orange paper. They really enjoyed the story and activity and were proud to bring their jack-o-lanterns home!

In September, Ki Ieva made some more natural dye from goldenrod and shared it with our class along with some natural white wool yarn. The children dipped this yarn in the dye, it became a beautiful yellow, and we hung it in the forest to dry. Last week, we used our hand-dyed yarn to finger knit beautiful yellow handles for our lanterns. For some students, this was their first time finger knitting and they were both amazed and proud to see what they had made. We also heard a story about a child who got a spark of the last Autumn rays from Brother Sun and made a beautiful lantern house to protect the spark through the winter. On Thursday and Friday, after we heard this same story inside, we lighted our lanterns and we could see their beautiful glow.

As our jack-o-lantern was already getting moldy with the warm, wet weather, we decided to break it up in smaller pieces for the compost. We started by practicing our hammering skills. Each child, one at a time, took a turn with a hammer and a nail. They practiced small swings of the hammer and, once they had hammered the nail in, they turned the hammer around and learned how to pull the nail back out again. As I was showing them how to use the claw end of the hammer, one child cried out “it’s like a lever!” and was so excited to see something he knew about at work before his eyes. We broke the pumpkin up into small pieces and took it to the compost at the farm on Friday. We will continue practicing with hammers and nails in softer items and, after we have mastered this, we will move on to hammering nails into wood.

Announcements and Reminders:

● TONIGHT- lantern walk at 6:00 pm

● THIS WEEK- coat drive for One Warm Coat, through Friday

● 11/14-11/18- Non-Perishable food drive for Never Alone food pantry

● 11/18- Thanksgiving luncheon and half-day dismissal for all students

● 11/21-11/25- NO SCHOOL- Thanksgiving break

Thank you for sharing your children with us and being a part of our community!
Grace and Peace,

Ki Kim