Forest Dreamers “Leaf” For Summer!

The trails will be quieter over the next few months. The reason you may be able to hear more birds and breeze is because our first year of Forest Dreamers has come to a close! This year, we have laughed, mucked, rolled, jumped, crawled, painted, spun, ran, climbed, pushed, pulled, plucked, prodded, observed, questioned, crept, drawn, cooked, explained, carved, burned, realized, hopped, stalked, stuck, imagined, cried, rested, covered, uncovered, smelled, tasted, identified, understood, played, pantomimed, sang, explained, captured, released, chased, trekked and trailblazed through our weeks. Each week was a different discovery and a different story to add to our memories. Ms. Sophie and Ms. Paula will always remember our first class and all of the new experiences (and growing pains!) that came with a new program. We are so thankful for all of your love and support.

On Tuesday, our last lesson was about solving problems. We solve things all of the time in our daily lives without even thinking about it. If we are thirsty, we get ourselves a drink, if our feet are cold, we put on some socks, if we are getting rained on, we seek shelter (which we’ve learned to do a lot this season!). We learned that scientists solve problems, too. Some of the problems we have, we can find the answers to them by using the knowledge we already have! Ms. Sophie played a guessing game with us to illustrate the point. She gave us clues about an object. Each clue gave us a little more information until finally, we could guess! We used our new knowledge of the scientific method to solve a problem of our own. Ms. Paula brought in a special object to discover. See if you can use the clues to guess what it was:

Brown

Grows on a tree

Not found around Maryland (except for a grocery store!)

Hairy

Has water inside of it

Did you guess it was a coconut? 🙂

Our problem was that we wanted to try to extract the water out of the coconut without losing or wasting any of it. We took some guesses of how we thought this might be done.

We realized that we didn’t have a knife, or blender, or hammer with us, and that busting it on a hard surface would cause the water to be lost. Ms. Sophie found a screw on the ground in the Ed Hut and we thought it would be a perfect point to use on the hard coconut shell. We started with a large branch as a hammer but found it too awkward to swing. We ended up with a heavy rock with a flat side. Worked like a charm!

We didn’t come to our answer right away. Some scientists have to use a lot of guessing and testing before they arrive at their conclusion!

After harvesting the water, we burst the coconut onto the road and everyone had a slice!

Thursday was our “leafing” ceremony. It was a relaxing day at the barn. We ate, read poems, and added a leaf to our class tree. We will forever be memorialized in the history of Forest Dreamers! Ms. Sophie and Ms. Paula are so proud of you all!

Keep Exploring, Forest Dreamers!