In 2016 I’m doing a 365 Nature project. Each day of the year I will post something here about nature. It may be any format, a photo, video, audio, sketch or entry from my nature journal. It could be a written piece. Each day I will connect to nature in some way and share it here by the end of that day. You can keep up-to-date by subscribing to the RSS feed or be notified by email. See all the 365 Nature posts.
June is also 30 Days Wild and I’m participating again this year.
A couple of weeks ago, my daughter’s forest preschool, Fiddleheads Forest School located here in Seattle at the Washington Park Arboretum, put on an art show in Georgetown as part of their monthly Art Attack. The art is still on the walls at Machine House Brewery and will be for another couple of weeks. There are signs talking about the school and the art projects the kids made. One of the projects was to create a trillium flower, which is the name of my daughter’s classroom. In the spring trilliums did in fact grow up around their classroom and the kids were very careful to put sticks around the flowers so they didn’t step on them. They also spent time with trilliums and thought about how they made them feel. These feelings were written on the art and offered a great insight into the kids thoughts. My favorite was “I have a lot of feelings when I look at the trillium, mostly excited like a penguin.” Her class also made a beautiful bunting, each kid hammered plants onto a fabric flag. The entire thing together turned out beautifully.
The other classroom is the Magnolia class and they made paintings of their magic spots. Each kid in both classes have their very own magic spot, somewhere they can go and be by themselves to be with the forest.
It’s been such a great experience having our daughter at this school and I feel lucky every day. During the last week of the school year, the Barred Owl chicks which nest near the classrooms had hatched and the parents were active all day while the kids were in school. One of the adult owls had taken up a daytime roost right next to their classroom, in a very small tree only a few feet off the ground. The kids laid on their stomachs and watched the owl.
Now, during summer school the kids get to visit the pond and watch dragonflies and explore the arboretum in the warmer months.
Fiddleheads has been featured in the New York Times and Medium.
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