While the building of knowledge and developing of skills needed for children to deeply engage with and actually carry out the big work of collecting sap and making maple syrup is always happening throughout the year and in layers of accumulated experience that students add to season after season, we all know what Pete Seeger means when he sings, “First, you get the buckets ready.” We started taking stock of buckets and spiles, identifying and measuring mature sugar maples to determine where to set our taps, mounding up snow to build our sap cooler, and preparing our tools and data sheets back in January.  When we lay the foundation for this singularly magical project-based education opportunity we are certainly preparing to produce the sweetest syrup, but we are equally inspired to make the most of the many rich flavors of curricular learning possible, from mathematics and chemistry to indigenous history. 

In the first days of February the weather and daily high and low temperatures told us the sap run was imminent. First-timers and seasoned sugar-makers worked together to drill the holes, set the spiles, hang the buckets and start hauling sap! At every step, children take turns making careful measurements and recording important information that enable us to quantify and analyze this year’s harvest and compare it to past and future seasons. A quick glance at the data shows that we had a brief early sap run the first week of February followed by nearly three weeks of hard freeze with no sap to collect and then a big run in the last few weeks. By last Friday we had stored up nearly 40 gallons of sap and “boiled and boiled and boiled and boiled all day long.” The eventual result was just about one full gallon of finished maple syrup! The window for collecting sap is just about over as the trees emerge fully from winter dormancy and begin using all of their sugar to build new leaves and flowers. The possibilities and enthusiasm for making candy, cooking pancakes, and celebrating with our friends and family at Maple Fest continue to boil over. Keep up the fire!

But syrup has some other tricks up its sleeves. The process of evaporation can be taken further as the syrup evolves into ever sticker, shinier and more solidified versions of itself, aka candy. This week the children had an opportunity to experiment with evaporating syrup to produce a variety of sweet confections. Sugar has unique properties that cause it to preform differently at specific temperatures. From softball at 235 degrees F to hardcrack at 270 degrees F, there is much to learn about density, volume, viscosity, crystalization and chemistry from our sweet friend, syrup. 

We have been collaborating on a beautiful sculpture installation in the amphitheatre that we’re excited to unveil at Maple Fest. This project is inspired by the Maple Tree Series by artist Sana Musasama. We are using natural materials, gems, stumps, stones, finger knitting and shells to create our own inspired Sugar Bush installation. The children have been carefully adding to our creation each day over the course of the past two weeks, including rolling and carrying large stumps and stones to our sculpture site. 

In addition to our Sana Musasama installation, we’ve been working in the studio with clay and glaze to create our maple ceramics projects- we have tall stacks of fluffy pancakes, maple trees, waffles that double as tic tac toe boards and marble runs, and lots more maple inspired clay work! As we work with clay, children really practice those fine motor skills, alongside their clay knowledge- scoring and slipping the clay, measuring that it’s thick enough but not too thick, and making sure their clay stays hydrated! This week their work is coming out of the kiln and they’ve started glazing their work. We’re hopeful that we’ll do our final kiln runs next week in plenty of time for the big reveal at Maple Fest! 

Last but not least, on Tuesday we celebrated our 100th day of school! One of our many 100th day choices was to try and draw our school dinosaur, Roger, 100 times! We only made it to 32 on Tuesday but we had a blast trying! Here are a handful of our super creative Rogers- from Archery Roger to Bathing Roger to Captain Hook Roger!

This week we made some forward progress on our project to make the S. Authors and Illustrators section more inclusive. In our initial discussions about the problem of all the authors in this section being White, we identified that we needed to make room to include authors of color. We also noticed that there are authors of color that are included in other sections of our library, so we might already have books that we could move into the S. section. The Woodpeckers and Hummingbirds got started this week on tackling both of these steps. 

The Hummingbirds got us started on making some room in the Authors and Illustrators section. Before we can decide what books might be able to be moved elsewhere, we first had to figure out what books should stay in that section. We talked about the importance of making sure the library serves each child and grown-up in this community as it exists now, and that the library is meant to be for them! Each Hummingbird was instructed to pick a book that they really love and/or that they think a kid in the Downstairs or Upstairs Neighborhood would really love. 

After they carefully made their selections, they piled the books together on the table. Some were surprised to find that there were so many books in that section that they really loved. Some found books they remember loving when they were in the Downstairs. Some kids decided to read the book they had chosen. 

Over the coming weeks, every kid at Randolph will get a chance to weigh in on which authors and illustrators are really important to keep in the S. section. Next up, the Ducklings and Upstairs Neighborhood will get a chance to explore lots of books by authors of color that we might want to add to our library collection.