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February 10, 2023

Notes from the Field With evan

The sap is flowing!

From the newest young friends just joining our community to each and every person that has spent time at the school in decades past, this news heralds a singularly thrilling season of learning and working together at Randolph that links us all to this land and each other through shared experiences and transferable skills and understandings that will last a lifetime.

Although the specific date varies from year to year, this sweetest of seasonal cycles returns reliably on a magical mid-winter morning when the rime of a cold and freezing night time gives way to the thaw of a warm and sunny day. As many of us start feeling too hot under all of our winter layers the air becomes electric with the sense that “it’s tapping time!” Well before we begin drilling holes and setting spiles in trees in hopes of seeing sap dripping, our veteran sugar-makers of all ages start flowing forth with knowledge about hand tools and circumferences and diameter and bud identification and volumetric ratios and the location of particularly productive trees, flooding our student community with a wealth of shared information and infectious excitement. This initial burst of stored up knowledge and enthusiasm sets the stage for a comprehensive, student-led sugaring operation that invites newcomers to the front and center of the hands-on sap to syrup process and enables returning students to build increasingly complex understandings upon the scaffold of past experience.

In the initial days of each sugaring season our focus is on making space for the sheer joy and natural sense of wonder that inevitably springs eternal in the course of hugging trees, trepidatiously drilling first holes, waiting breathlessly to see that initial spurt of sap mixed with wood shavings, and lining up with one finger tenderly extended to catch one drop and taste for the sugar molecules hidden within. An ensuing hug and whispered “thank you” to each tree follows automatically. In the coming weeks as we work to collect and then boil the sap, all of the learning leading up to the sugaring curriculum and the innumerable extensions that follow will become increasingly evident across age groups. The Downstairs Fungi Friends have already started curating a new “Sap Time News” board on the front porch while Robins and Kittens are putting their practice with hand-tools to work by building their own loom to use in making a woven “Sap-o-meter” to report daily sap collection. The Barn Owls are collecting and preparing to report weather data that will help us analyze sap collection this season and look for patterns and connections between physical conditions and trees, while Elder Guardians are developing their own data sheets and methodology for measuring and comparing the rate of flow of different spiles at different times. In Links we are learning to better understand trees by printing with wood cross-sections and how to listen to and reproduce the musicality of sap dripping into buckets. The Randolph approach to education works best when we seek after and celebrate the connections in everything we do, and rarely do such opportunities flow as freely as they do when it’s Maple Syrup Time.

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In (and Outside of) the Studio With Nina

Exploration of Symmetry

As we’ve continued our exploration of symmetry, we moved from bilateral symmetry into looking at radial symmetry. The definition children were most able to really understand was that radial symmetry is like a pizza- any way you slice it, as long as you go through the center, both halves will be the same. We made radially symmetrical creations out of blocks and gems. We looked at examples of radial symmetry in nature, like a flower, the top of a palm tree, the segments of an orange that’s been cut in half. We also looked at the Hindu and Buddhist practice of making mandalas and the way the act itself is a kind of meditation.

From these explorations, we drew our own radially symmetrical creations, which were everything from a symmetrical pizza to a monster with many radiating tentacles, to a mandala-esque circle full of repeating patterns. Some groups also explored the challenge of creating radial symmetry with a friend. One person would draw half of a circular creation and their partner would try to copy those marks, with the end result being mostly radially symmetrical.

Our last radial symmetry exploration was using one of our favorite media- printmaking. Each child created a square pattern which, when printed, would be printed 4 times to create a full circle with radial symmetry. This was a multi-step process, starting with drawing a plan for their printing plate on paper, copying their design onto a styrofoam printing plate, and then finally printing it using printing ink. The printing process was tricky- we had to make sure our printing plates were lined up just right while also remembering to rotate the plate each time to give us that symmetry.

We did a lot of problem solving in this work. We focused on little details and exercised our hand-eye coordination. We also learned to mostly be okay about mistakes and just keep trying!

Back in the Stacks with Siobhan

Overheard in the Library

In the past month, having paper and writing/coloring utensils on hand has been an important part of the work our kids have been doing in the library. Part of the reason why can be explained by this quote from Upstairs Neighborhood friend, Tahlia: “I’m not just reading, I’m researching.”

One recent day in the library, three Neighborhood friends were busy in the library as part of their Choice Time when they were joined by a fourth. These are snippets of the conversation that followed.

Ella: [approaching Frances and Natalie] Why are you guys drawing?

Natalie: We’re doing research.

Tahlia: I’m doing research, too.

Ella: I wanna do research, too.

Tahlia: Get some paper and a pencil. [Points out where the paper and pencils are kept to Ella.]

Ella: Okay. I want books like yours.

Tahlia: Look in the Science section.

Ella: Where is the science section?

[Tahlia gets up to show Ella where the Science section is.]

Tahlia: Look for “C”.

[They find the C section and then the Space subcategory.]

Sidenote: [Librarian’s heart bursts with pride.]

The conversation continues. They sit down at the table with science books and paper. They talk about science, do research, and take notes, making comments to each other like, “That’s the universe” and “Those are good asteroids.”

Ella: [pointing to an illustration of the Milky Way in The Planets] Hey, Siobhan. Does this look beautiful?

Siobhan: It sure does.

Ella: I’m gonna draw about it.

When it was time to leave, they stashed their research in a cubby for safekeeping until their next library time. When it’s finished, most of it will find its way to one of the walls in the library, where the kids have been busy and engaged working on a big project. (Look for a longer post about that coming soon.)

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