Hey Friends,
With the temperatures rising, and the snow disappearing, our Winter semester is slowly melting away. The good news? Maple sap is-a-flowin’.
“Maple Forest”
We started our day off with a Macro Model we created called Sappy, Sappy. In this activity, students slid into the roles of sap collection in an epic sap flow vs spiles and buckets challenge. It’s an educational take on a classic game (Octopus) that students would have played all day if they could have! And a great way to dive into our Maple Syrup day.
After learning about the science behind sap flow, we wasted no time in rushing out to our sugar bush (aptly named Maple Forest) to meet up with our Maple Master “Uncle” Al, who taught us about all the steps in making syrup. The students eagerly navigated the 83 tapped trees, tasted the sap and explored the sugar shack to watch the boiling process in action. They even tasted Maple Syrup fresh from the tap.
Looking for sap!
We were able to sneak in a little math today as the students recorded findings about a tree of their choosing. They took out their yarn to measure the circumference of the tree and filled their measuring cups to discover how much sap their tree had yielded. After a tour and presentation of everyone’s trees, students made the connection of size of tree (and number of buckets!) to volume output (though we had a HUGE rogue tree that yielded basically no sap; which led to some interesting theories…). We also worked on ratios — 40:1 for Sap to Syrup (though Al likes his even sweeter and does 50:1). We helped collect wood for Al to keep the fires going then headed back to the school house for lunch.
Measuring Circumference
After some time for exploratory play (and inevitably more rounds of Sappy, Sappy), students created a Mokuk (a birch bark bucket) to mimic those historically used by some Indigenous people to collect sap. We also created some photo frames for our Class Photos taken last week.
Finally, it was our turn to indulge. We set out to our camp pit, built a fire (despite the rain) and cooked up some pancakes. And of course… we smothered them in Maple Syrup from our very own Sugar Bush!
Next Week:
Community Projects! We’ll be getting helpful and creative. If your child has a project they’d like to work on, please encourage them to bring it in to share.
With the nice weather, we are going to do drop-off and pick-up at Bygone Days. We’ll be sure to send out an email reminder.
Congrats to our Bead recipients – Everyone received their Winter Warrior bead for tackling Winter head on over the past couple months. We also gave out some cooking beads, litterless lunch beads and bingo beads! Congrats everyone!
See you next week,
Kim and Matt
More Photos:
