In the snowy woods today.

February 21, 2008

What a wonderful day! Freezing cold, outdoors, in the woods in a snowstorm, showing 4th graders how to tap sugar maples. It really was fun. First I “shadowed” someone who has given the mini talk on tree structure and a “build a tree” activity for several seasons. I probably could have winged it, I've done the same talk myself, but different people do things differently, so I watched and listened. I get to do it on my own on Saturday for about 9 hours.

It works this way:
“Hi kids! This is how a tree works, here's a giant tree cookie, here's the Xylem, here's the phloem....yada, yada. Now lets make a tree! Ok- nice a frozen yet? Into the woods! Let's pick out our tree.. where should we drill the hole?” It's really fun and fourth graders are great. The are still enthusiastic, and even though it was only about 20 degrees and snowing, they were very engaged and I only had a few whiners. Most of them wanted to stay out and tap more trees. Of course my feet and fingers were cold by the end of the day, but a day in the snow in the woods is 100% better than a day in the office. It's a strange thing. Standing out in the sugar bush, with snow falling and 20 degrees, I didn't feel a bit cold. I was about as bad as the kids, and more than willing to tap more trees.

Took a night off from homework. I have a couple articles to read. One instructor has been MIA for about 2 weeks. The other class is only demanding about every other week, so I can work a week then just read a week. I need to catch up a bit, because I 'll have an assignment due in a week and need to read this and next weeks readings to do it. Tonight I managed to read a large part of a book for the Reading Divas exchange. I spent yesterday ordering books I didn't have and digging out books I did for all my exchange commitments for the rest of the year. March, April and May are going to be BUSY so if I can get this all done and out of the way, that's one less thing to worry about.

Calm and warm tonight. 1.5 inches of snow today and more coming tomorrow. A snow day would be fine with me.

Peace.