Second Grade: Herbal Salve

 The Second Grade was so lucky to work with my parent volunteer Amanda to create an amazing herbal salve to give as a gift for the holidays. Amanda soaked yarrow, comfrey, and plantain in sesame oil for several days. Then, the children filtered the oil and mixed it with coconut oil, St. John's Wort extract, and beeswax.

 The children bottled it in small jars where it hardened into a wonderful salve for the body. 

Winter Gifts: Bird Seed Pinecones

Every year I tell a story to the kindergartners about "Winter Gifts". It is a prelude to our seasonal activity - pine cone bird feeders. The children understand these feeders are a thank you to our feathered friends during the leaner times of winter.

The children carefully put sunflower butter all over the pine cone, then roll it in wild bird seed. Once covered with seed, each child finds a special place to hang the feeder.

While we are making the feeders one can almost feel the birds circling closer and closer. I think they've come to expect this each year. As soon as the children turn their backs, the birds are all over the pine cones, and within just a couple days, the birds completely pick each feeder clean.

You can see the progression here.

Our First Frost

It's cold these days, and this morning I observed the first signs of a light frost. A light frost is when the temperature drops below 32 degrees. Many plants can weather this with out problem. A hard frost, on the other hand, is when the temperature drops below 25 degrees for four or more consecutive hours. Few plants tolerate that well.

You can see the frost on the soil and on the strawberry leaves. These are photos of planted pots. You'll usually observe more frost on potted plants than those in ground due to the tempering aspect of the earth's relative warmth.

A Bright Red Mushroom

We discovered a couple bright red mushrooms hiding in the clover. Over two days the mushrooms went from firm and fresh, to decomposed mush.

Third Graders' Bath Salts

The Farriers spent the day mixing fresh herbs from St. Anne's with sea salt to create a bath salt mix. The bath salts will be on sale at Winter Fair, Sunday December 8. 

We included rosemary, thyme, oregano, lemon peel, mint, and lavender.

Once the ingredients were well mixed into the salt, we spooned it into mason jars and added a ribbon and hand made label. Several of the Farriers hope to buy their own jar back at Winter Fair!

Last year the now 4th grade made an herbal salt rub for meat and vegetables. The ingredients were similar to those listed above, but included garlic. Unfortunately, the labels weren't clear that the salt was a cooking rub, and I heard later that several folks had bought the jars at Winter Fair for use in the bath. I hope they didn't mind soaking in garlic!

Mushrooms - Three Days Later

Those mushrooms are growing by the day. Look how much bigger they are just three days after the earlier pictures!

Any identification ideas?

Mushrooms!

After a bit of rain we've had a plethora of mushroom growth! These grew along the side of a old stump. We did not succeed in identifying them. Any ideas?