Once upon a time, a teacher named Chris went and hid deep in the woods while playing his special flute. The kids and other teachers at Fairywood wanted to go find him. They hiked into the forest, pausing every now and then to listen for the sound of the flute. They would hear it echo off the hillsides in the valley. The kids decided which paths to take. They climbed over fallen logs and crossed the creek many times. The flute got louder and louder. Finally, they found

There is something about sitting around a fire in the tipi that really encourages storytelling, and that is just what we got up to on Thursday. The kids dictated stories that teachers wrote down in their journals, word for word. Then we took turns reading the stories aloud to the whole group. Some kids opted to skip the writing part and just improvised stories out loud. We told silly stories, spooky stories, and stories about things that happen at Fairywood. We've also b

We experienced a dramatic change in weather last week and we went on two big adventures. On Tuesday it was very warm as we followed the big creek about halfway to Lake Monroe. We found cool rock formations, fungi, frogs, and crawdads. On Thursday it was much colder, so we warmed up our bodies by hiking up "Fairy Mountain" where we discovered a painted turtle! These new environments supported some rich dramatic play as well. Back at Fairywood we explored shadows on the ti

We had a great week exploring new areas of the forest, taking Rosie the alpaca for a walk, finding fungi and other natural mysteries everywhere, working in our journals, and mixing up potions of glue, paint, and bubbles. The kids really enjoyed melting crayons over the coleman stove. They swirled the colorful wax in the pan and then we made prints by carefully pressing paper over the wax. Then we wrote down what they saw in the images.

Thursday was full of experiments. Lincoln's family donated a bunch of scrap lumber and we discovered that these boards are perfect for making scooter and bike ramps. The kids experimented with different ways of going up and down. We also made ramps for walking on and tested how much weight they could hold. We got a lot of practice negotiating with each other and taking turns. We worked together as we explored which combinations of baking soda, vinegar, soap, and paint wou