This week at Tsula was about enjoying the gorgeous “faux fall” weather we have in Tennessee. The students were very interested in tree-climbing. They started off in a pine tree,but soon found an amazing Maple tree which they dubbed “The Owl’s Nest”, and now we have big plans for a tree-house.

All the kids took turns and had lessons in driving the “Mule”, which is a terrific introduction to driving- the Mule is pretty simple, and very tough- as well as being a fun and thrilling way to learn a new skill. 

One of our younger students came up with the terrific idea of naming landmarks around the farm, and this is turning into an ongoing project of being mindful when we are hiking, to give names to trees and unusual landmarks and  making directional signs all over the farm for future events. We explored a wooded part of the farm the kids had never seen, and found a wet-weather spring which had created a crevasse that looked like a cave. Thursday we went to a local plant store to find plants for a science experiment, and we talked about annuals vs. perennials. The students also have an interest in origami, and they made origami “claws” out of paper.

We have one more week of ultra-hot weather (hopefully) and then we can look forward to the beginning of Autumn, and planting figs to grow alongside the Paw-Paw trees in the orchard. Somewhere in all of this, we also fitted sewing lessons and of course, the ubiquitous math! Overall, this week felt very Montessori-like in that the students expressed big interests in doing many disparate activities, and we made it happen, which made it magical. We learned a lot, but we also HAD FUN.