On Uneven Ground

“Let us take the child out
to show him real things
instead of making objects
which represent ideas
and closing them in cupboards.”
—Dr. Maria Montessori,
From Childhood to Adolescence


We had finally arrived!
After weeks of planning, arranging for our bus, accumulating supplies, recruiting parent chaperones, preparing the children, and worrying about the weather, we had arrived at the Stone City fossil site, ready to act as paleontologists, digging into the past!
“In the classroom we have been talking a lot about fossils and now we finally get to go on a real fossil dig with real fossils.”
—M.H., 3rd grade

Yes! Maria Montessori writes that field trips are the key to “intensification of instruction.” When we take children out of the classroom, “the world itself opens” to them and “instruction becomes a living thing” (From Childhood to Adolescence). This trip was a special one—as the children put it, “a gift” from Target.

Last October, I applied for the Target Field Trip Grant that ultimately funded this field trip because I wanted the children to experience the thrill of discovery that accompanies paleontology fieldwork. After participating in the Paleontology Field School for Educators last summer with scientists from the Museum of Natural Science, I wanted to offer my students the same direct experience with dirt (let's call it "geology"). We have a class set of fossils, and the children enjoy using a guidebook to identify the fossils and classify them by era (Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, or Cenozoic). We also visit the science museum every year. But these somewhat sterile experiences with geology do not give children a clear idea of what it is to work in the field.

Rather than merely bring fossils into the classroom, I wanted the children to live it. As my high school history teacher regularly bellowed at us in our post-lunch stupor, “Crawl out from under your rocks and see the world! Touch it, smell it, taste it!” I wanted the children to dig their fingers into the dirt and taste what it is to be a field geologist.

And taste, some did—literally:
“You can taste dirt because it’s possible that when you are digging, dirt can get in your mouth too!”—C.J., 3rd grade
“When I slid down the hill I got dirt in my mouth!” –D.O., 1st grade
“I tasted a rock to see if it was coprolite but it was a rock.”—C.G., 3rd grade

This trip had the added bonus of getting the children outdoors, on uneven ground. At first there was some drama.
“We had to walk on this unstable walkway. On the way down it was hard as I don’t know what.” –K.E., 3rd grade
The outcrop is sloped and some of my flatlander urban children were wary and frightened, but the fear soon faded. Before long, everyone was happily climbing up the slope (and occasionally sliding down—ya gotta love gravity!)

David Temple, Associate Curator of Paleontology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, met us at the site to serve as an expert resource for the children (and, I suspect, to see if I could really pull this off).
“Once we got down Dave talked about safety and how you can really get a lot of fossils and how to dig.”—K.E., 3rd grade

“At the site Dave helped us out on figuring out what the names of the fossils were but mostly we were able to identify them ourselves.”
—M.H., 3rd grade
“What was great about the field trip was we got to work with a paleontologist, a real one.”
—C.G., 3rd grade
Reading the children’s thank you letters was enlightening: “What I liked best is digging for fossils, but one of my favorite paleontologists tried to find a snake. He is really nice and that was the best part of the field trip.”—W.L., 3rd grade
I don’t think it's a stretch to say that Dave has become something of a super-hero scientist for my students. (Now, what to put on the cape . . . ?)

The children divided into their Cooperative Investigation Teams (multi-age groups of first, second, and third graders) to find, collect, and identify marine invertebrate fossils, as well as shark teeth, ray teeth, and small fish bones. Each group carried a backpack "field kit," including a compass, measuring tape, magnifying lens, first aid kit, colored pencils, a field notebook, a camera, and field guides. We also packed buckets with trowels, screwdrivers, pointy ceramics “needles,” forceps, brushes, ziplock specimen bags, and laminated identification pages specific to the fossils at Stone City.

The day before our field trip, one of my third graders wrote in her journal, “We are going to a fossil dig and I will be soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo happy and peaceful.”—C. B., 3rd grade
Me, too! Who can feel stressed and grouchy when they’re outside in nature, digging in the dirt? The perfect remedy for the bout of TAKS we endured earlier in the week!
When I scanned the banks to check that the children were on task and behaving safely, every one of them looked relaxed and content.

—breaking their treasure-hunt trances only to share their finds or ask about a possible fossil.

Our stomachs are trained for an 11:15 lunchtime. By 11:30 on a typical field trip, I’ve usually received several somewhat desperate-sounding inquiries about lunch. This time, there were no such complaints. Instead, the children groaned and protested when I insisted (after noon) that we take a quick lunch break. Forced to turn our eyes away from the dirt for a while, we spotted a gorgeous swallowtail butterfly and a vulture riding the thermals overhead. The children were back to fossil finding before I could finish my sandwich.
It was hard to pry them away when it was time to go. “This was the best field trip and I wanted to stay there all day long.” —C.B., 3rd grade

“I L-O-V-E-D the field trip! We got to actually DIG! (at Stone City). I found sundials, augers, and tusks! Now, I feel like a scientist!”
—E.N., 3rd grade
Success!

On the bus ride home, we were playing the game, “I’m thinking of something that begins with ___.” One of my first graders called out, “I’m thinking of something that begins with ‘B.’” We began guessing, “Banana?” “Beach?” “Balloon?”
“It’s a hard one,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. Hmm. “Bivalve?” “Brachiopod?” “Barbed wire?” “Bacteria?”
She began to grow impatient with us, “It’s something that we saw.” “Today?” I asked.
“No, it’s Brachylophosaurus!” Ohhh, but of course!

“You see we’ve been learning about fossils for a while now so this field trip was really important to us. We had lots of fun climbing the hills and digging for fossils, especially cool and interesting fossils. They were very fun to hunt. We got to act like real paleontologists and geologists. I don’t think I would ever forget this fossil field trip because it’s my first one and because it’s so special.”—K.E., 3rd grade

Huge thanks to:
Target for the Field Trip Grant that funded our big, fancy bathroom bus
DonorsChoose donors for our microscopes and field guides
Six parents for bravely joining us on this adventure to ensure the children’s safety and provide a more individualized learning experience
David Temple, HMNS Associate Curator of Paleontology, for generously sharing his time, passion, and expertise two days in a row
Chris Flis and the rest of the fossil-finding “gang” at HMNS for introducing me to the site and inspiring me to give this field trip a try
Mrs. D for aiding and abetting


Stone City Fossil Site (a.k.a. Whiskey Bridge):
You may wish to bring your family there for a day of digging. The site is open to the public and located where Highway 21 crosses the Brazos River. Take Highway 6 North and turn West onto Highway 21. Pass over the Little Brazos and keep going until you spot the railroad bridge on your right. Cross the river and pull off the road onto the gravel pull-off on the right just beyond the bridge. Walk down to the river, and enjoy fossil hunting—but be cautious of hazards!

Advice for fossil hunters:
“This is advice that I will give a fossil hunter: Look for a not steep hill and when you get used to it go to a steep hill and it takes balance.”
—J.J., 1st grade
“The advice I would give to other fossil hunters is look at the top.”
—K.B., 2nd grade
“My advice to other fossil hunters would be Not to go all crazy because you will fall and dig carefully because you will break little fossils. It will be exciting to find a ray tooth and other fish teeth.”
—C.J., 3rd grade
“I would tell other fossil hunters to use their eagle eyes.”—S.B., 3rd grade
“I would tell other fossil hunters that they could find lots and lots of univalves and shark teeth. They can find a lot of fossils by digging deep.”—W.L., 3rd grade
“To the fossil hunters out there, look under or beside you. There are fossils!”—E.N., 3rd grade


What we’re reading:
In My Own Backyard by Judi Kurjian
Fossils (True Books) by Ann Squire
If You Are a Hunter of Fossils by Byrd Baylor
The Paleogene Period by Doug & Claudia Mann

What I’m Reading:
Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature (For Kids of all Ages and their Mentors) by Jon Young, Ellen Haas, & Evan McGown

Cultivating Curiosity

"We do not want complacent pupils, but eager ones;
we seek to sow life in the child rather than theories."
—Dr. Maria Montessori, To Educate the Human Potential

One of the things I love about working with children is that they’re naturally inquisitive. They wonder about the world around them, and they ask great questions! I’m not afraid to tell you that they regularly ask questions to which I don’t have an answer. This is a good thing. It means the children begin to understand that learning, acquiring knowledge, is a life-long journey of discovery. They will have the tools (and hopefully desire) to keep learning long after they have left Room 28. Rather than an expert standing in front of the class, attempting to pour my “vast” knowledge into their empty-vessel brains, we are partners in exploration. Frequently, I answer their questions with, “I don’t know, but that’s a great question. Why don’t you do some research and find out for us.”

Until this year, that was too often the end of it because we didn’t have a system for following through. I hated that the children asked such thoughtful questions and yet, they were often forgotten as our busy lives marched on without pursuit of answers. So this year, I decided we should keep a record of all those great questions—hence our Great Questions Book. This was quickly adopted into our Class Meeting routine. Our student Facilitator checks the Great Questions Book for new questions and asks for volunteers to investigate.

A few weeks ago, a wonderful question appeared in the Great Questions Book: Do twins have the same fingerprints? “Wow! I’m not sure, but now I want to know!” I thought to myself. It is easy to model amazement and wonder for the children when they ask such great questions. I suspect this question arose because our class includes one member of a pair of identical twins. (The other twin is in the classroom next door.) “How could we find out?” I challenged the class. Together, we designed an investigation. Both twins allowed me to ink and print each finger five times (periodically using their math skills to calculate how many fingerprints were left to do) so that all five Cooperative Science Groups would have sets of fingerprints for examination. Thanks to a generous group of donors from DonorsChoose, we also acquired our very own class microscopes to aid in this investigation.

The investigation was on, and the children easily shifted into the role of scientific detectives (complete with magnifying glasses!), eager to solve the mystery. Armed with the two sets of fingerprints and a few pages about fingerprint patterns and classification, each Cooperative Science Group worked together to gather evidence that would ultimately support or dispute their hypothesis. There was a busy but productive hum in the room as the groups worked, and then we gathered together again for the groups to present their observations and conclusions. Interestingly, in their observations the groups had not all focused in on the same sets of fingers as evidence for their conclusions.

Early in the week, as I collected the sets of fingerprints, I was amazed and fascinated by what I saw and I knew the children would be too. I had expected the fingerprints to be quite similar, perhaps with very subtle differences that might be difficult for the children to detect. Instead, the differences on several fingers were dramatic and distinct. Mrs. D. and I were both surprised.

I love it when our hypotheses are wrong! Somehow our culture transmits the idea that making mistakes or being “wrong” is not O.K. Until I instituted the practice of recording hypotheses in pen, the children often felt the urge to erase and “correct” a hypothesis that was not supported by the evidence gathered in their experiment, but as I regularly remind the children, that’s when real discovery happens—when you find out you were wrong. If our hypotheses were always correct, there wouldn’t be much point in experimenting.

Unfortunately, I think even professional scientists and researchers sometimes forget this. The preeminent experts in a field often wield too much influence, and ideas (and evidence!) that run counter to popular thought are too easily ignored or dismissed. I worry about what we might be missing because someone (or a group of someones) is too invested in one answer to a question. As humans, we sometimes attend only to the evidence that supports our expectations and fail to leave our senses open to other possibilities. I observe this every year when the children perform the apocryphal Galileo/Leaning Tower of Pisa gravity experiment by dropping two balls of different mass with the same volume and shape. Often, the children see and hear only what they expect to—that the heavier ball will land first. It takes encouragement for the children to really attend to their senses and step away from their preconceived ideas about what they expect to happen.

This tendency to be so certain of an answer (or so afraid of admitting we’re wrong) that we ignore evidence to the contrary starts early and lingers long. In middle and high school science, my friends and I would often figure out what “the right answer” was supposed to be and then work the lab backwards so that our "observations" matched that answer. But this focus on “right” inhibits discovery and slows our learning as a culture. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’s “final answer” has little place in science and learning. When I was my students’ age, I was taught that Brontosaurus was the name of that big plant-eating dinosaur and Pluto was a planet. Science isn’t static. Invite doubt in and welcome a sense of wonder. Ask Great Questions and investigate. As Ms. Frizzle says, “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”

Special thanks to twins N.J. and N.J. for the inspiration to ask and the evidence to answer this great question. I sent them home with very inky fingers. Science is messy!

3-20-09: Listen to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's keynote address about science education at the NSTA 2009 National Conference

Tea & Tradition:

The Business of Building "We"

“Here (in Pakistan and Afghanistan), we drink three cups of tea to do business: the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family.”—Haji Ali, Korphe Village Chief, Karakoram Mountains, Pakistan (from Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin)


Every year about this time, Mrs. D. and I begin bagging our belongings and hauling them to school. Teapots (5 this year, which I’m only slightly embarrassed to say represents less than half of my current collection, most of them given to me as gifts), a Santa-sized sack of tea (again, somewhere near half of what lives in my cabinet), baskets, bowls, spoons, servers, plates and platters, and what my brother refers to as my magical “water hotter”—all of it gets packed up and taken to school. “Whoa, that’s a lot of bags,” commented a third grader this afternoon when they (the bags) were all lined up, ready to go back home. It’s a lot of bags, and it’s a lot of work. My mother indulges me by loaning some of the contents of her cabinets and (begrudgingly) allowing me to forage for fresh flowers in her garden. Mrs. D. slaves over egg salad sandwiches and devotedly decorates sugar cubes (pink and red hearts, this year). Our students’ generous parents shop and bake and make placecards for the table. This is not your typical cookies-and-CapriSun Valentine’s Day party.

For me, this particular affliction began in the second grade when a British mother prepared for my class an authentic English tea, complete with silver teapot, milk, and sugar. Ahh, I was hooked. For my twelfth birthday party, I invited friends to a hotel for afternoon tea. “I can’t go yet—I have two more to try,” protested one friend. The next year, I spent two weeks living with a family in Japan, where the tea ceremony is quite literally a religious experience. In college, I corralled friends for a tea party and convinced two football player friends to whip cream cheese for cucumber sandwiches (keep in mind, this was Oberlin—where we forfeited games when too many players had upcoming exams and found our way to Sports Illustrated fame on the length of our losing streak). I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone who knows me that tea parties have become a Valentine’s Day tradition in my classroom.

We prepare ahead of time by reviewing appropriate table manners and practicing at the lunch table.
"Here are all the manners:
1) If you have a napkin, unfold it and place it in your lap.
2) Always take small bites.
3) Don't speak with food in your mouth.
4) Eat then have a little conversation.
5) No elbows on the table.
6) Please do not hold your cup like a coffee cup.
7) No yelling across or down the table.
8) If you think you don't like the food take a little to just try it.
9) If you don't really like the food don't say 'Yuk!' or 'Nasty!'
10) And dress nicely.
The 10th rule is my favorite because I love my outfit that I'm going to wear. My outfit is a secret and a surprise for Mrs. D. and Ms. S. because I love them as family." --WL, 3rd grade

When the day arrives, children who have completed a reasonable amount of work are invited to help with set-up. Our Beautiful Classroom manager arranges fresh cut flowers in vases.

Another child whips cream for the scones and strawberries.
More children arrange food attractively on trays (after carefully washing hands, of course)

and set the table. An older child sets out placecards, choosing spots in which children will enjoy one another’s company but not get so silly that they are excused from the table.

Before we move to the table, we have a quick history/geography lesson on tea, the regions in which it is grown, and some of the countries in which tea drinking has become a tradition. We look at photographs of tea plantations and tea ceremonies around the world. We then examine and smell the tea itself, passing around the fuzzy white buds of white tea, the grass-green leaves of green tea, the powdered yellow-green matcha used in Japanese tea ceremonies, and the oxidized dark leaves of black tea. The children sniffed the spicy aromas of loose chai—black tea blended with cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, and star anise, simmered with milk, and served sweet throughout India. We looked at a nest-shaped pellet of compressed tea (Pu-erh Tuo Cha), discussing early American Colonists’ anger at the tea tax imposed by the British and the speculation that this type of compressed tea, in the form of “tea bricks,” is probably what was thrown into the harbor during the Boston Tea Party. We passed around a hand-tied “teaposy” and then watched it magically bloom in a glass teapot of hot water. The “silver needle” white tea leaves are hand-tied with herbal flowers (rose and lily, in our case) in such a way that when water is added, the leaves “bloom” like an opening blossom and the flowers tied within spring up into the water. The effect is delightfully dramatic.



When everyone is seated at the table, we begin passing the savories from left to right:
egg salad finger sandwiches, meat & cheese sandwiches, deli spirals,
pigs in a blanket, mini quiches, banana bread, and mini muffins.

We then serve tea. The children are adventurous in sampling different types of tea. This year, we offered a bigger variety than usual: our blooming tea (“Heart of Love,” a white tea), Moroccan Mint (gunpowder green tea blended with peppermint), Mango Ceylon (black tea scented with mango and blended with marigold blossoms), Vanilla Almond (black tea blended with vanilla and almonds), and Cardamom Cinnamon (an herbal “tea” with flavors similar to chai—but not made with the leaves from the tea plant, Camellia sinensis, at all).

Napkins in laps, everyone waits to eat until the hosts (Mrs. D. and I) have assured that everyone has a cup of something warm and are seated. There are a few precious, silent moments after that when everyone (all 24 of us) is peacefully chewing and sipping.
I always wish our principal would walk in just then because it is a scene that’s difficult to describe and even harder to believe, but these moments are usually private. It’s probably just as well that these special times are shared only among members of our class. That’s what this tradition is all about: building a “we.” When I suddenly realize that time is getting away from us, and we must soon distribute Valentines and shepherd the children to ancillary and then dismissal, we pass the sweets: ginger snaps & lemon curd, strawberries with whipped cream, brownie bites, mini éclairs, and mini cream puffs. As we chat and munch, one of our second-grade boys remarks, “I better enjoy this day because it’s my last Valentine’s Day tea party.” His family plans to move this summer, and he continues, “This was my last Thanksgiving Feast and this will be my last End-of-School Pancake Breakfast.” The children mark their days by our traditions. That’s what makes all the work of this worth it—we’re building community in our classroom.



What We’re Reading:
A Valentine for Norman Noggs by Valiska Gregory
Roses Are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink by Diane deGroat
Ginko and Moon by Lisa Mertins
It’s Valentine’s Day by Jack Prelutsky
Oops! The Manners Guide by Nancy Holyoke
How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? by Jane Yolen
Emma Lea’s First Tea Ceremony by Babette Donaldson

More on Tea:
Tea, Aromas and Flavors Around the World by Lydia Gautier
Tea in the East by Carole Manchester
The Tea Companion: A Connoisseur’s Guide by Jane Pettigrew
A Dish of Tea: Recipes, History and Etiquette from Conner Prairie Museum (which oddly, I discovered in the Jamestown Settlement Gift Shop)

A great book for grownups:
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Note: Greg Mortenson is the closing keynote speaker at the upcoming American Montessori Society Conference! I can’t wait!


Great places to drink tea:
Serenitea (reasonably priced afternoon tea services)
Path of Tea (all-organic loose teas, with a “tea sniffing bar”)
Té House of Tea (light meals and a variety of teas)

Peace paste

I love the way children respond to the creative process. I used to teach ceramics and sculpture classes after school and in the summer. What amazed me was that a child whom I knew to be distracted and unsuccessful in school could walk into the ceramics studio and become happily and peacefully engrossed in a project. (Adults respond in the same way when they can let go of product and focus on process.) Art has transformative powers to soothe the spirit and settle the body.

This week, we've been engaged in a particularly messy art process: paste paper. When a new volunteer stopped by to chat about the work she'll be doing in our classroom, I was up to my elbows in paste!

The children, though, were peacefully creating.
When everyone was settled with supplies, disagreements and tattling melted away, leaving the happy hum of imagination at work.

I discovered the joys of paste paper at a summer Book Arts Studio at The Museum of Printing History. You should have seen our little group of teachers happily creating beautiful messes—let go of product and focus on process.

Paste paper is made with powdered wallpaper paste. Surprisingly, this is not to be found at your local all-night hardware gigantistore (I naively assumed it would be so and visited several on a late night one-woman field trip around town)—check Ace Hardware or Sherwin Williams. Learn from my second mistake by heeding the directions and mixing the powder with warm water rather than the cold water available from the tap at your local elementary school. Shake the powder and the water in a large glass jar with a lid (“My paste smells like pickles!”) until it resembles the clear gel I applied to mosquito bites and sunburn as a kid (if you didn’t benefit from this magical anesthetic, think Aloe Vera). Mix small amounts with a drop or two of acrylic paints of your choice, and you’re ready for your very own paste paper party!

Use a popsicle stick, a sponge brush, or a paint brush to spread colored paste on a piece of paper (choose thick art paper or cardstock—paper that tolerates being wet).

Next, you get to use all those random objects you’ve been saving for something special, you just didn’t know what.
Now’s their chance to shine (and your chance to prove to loved ones that you were right to save a stash of trash)!

Combs,

forks,

corks, marbles, gelato shovels, railroad tracks—anything that might make an interesting pattern.

The only rules here are:
Have fun
and know when to leave it alone and get out a fresh piece of paper.

After the papers dry, you will probably need to iron them.

Use your decorative papers for anything you wish: bookmarks, the fly pages or cover of a handmade book, scrapbook supplies, etc. We’ll be using ours for homemade cards.

Robert Fulghum writes, “Maybe we should develop a Crayon bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A Beauty Bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode in the air—explode softly—and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth—boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn’t go cheap, either—not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination” (All I Ever Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten).

Pass the crayons . . . and the paste!

Soil science

Armed with our new microscopes, we returned to "the lab" to analyze the soil samples we had collected from our two holes.

To hone their skills, our soil scientists first trained with separated soil components: sand, clay, humus, and gravel. I constructed “slides” from 1-inch by 3-inch pieces of cardstock, each punched with a hole and backed with transparent tape to hold a sprinkle of soil.

The children examined each component with a hand lens and then a microscope, creating a scientific illustration for each.

"I discovered that each soil has a different texture."--CJ, 3rd grade

"I observed that the clay looked like dust."--EN, 3rd grade

"Sand has crystals and grains of rock in many different colors."

"Gravel looks like mountains with snow on it." --KL, 3rd grade "The gravel looked like popcorn."--EN, 3rd grade

“Humus had a big chunk that looked like bark.”

Finally, our soil scientists had the expertise they needed to recognize these soil components in the samples from our holes. They began by examining soil collected from different depths (surface, 8cm deep, 23 cm deep, and 29 cm deep) in the hole near the building.

One group observed, "It looks like there is quartz or calcite in it and clay." Another group noticed a tiny chunk of broken glass. A third group concluded, "We think we would need humus--lots and lots of humus--to make a garden by the building."

The hole we dug in the grassy area produced more interesting finds.
"The hole near the building has more crystals than the one in the grassy area."
What would explain this difference? "The one in the grassy area had more clean water and the non-grassy area gets dirty mop water. Also, the grassy area has humus that has dead things in it that earthworms eat, and earthworms make good soil." Another group warns gardeners, "Make sure not to hurt the living creatures because they help the soil stay moist."

“We found something moving in our soil.”
“Ms. S., you better come and look at this.”
When I went over to check, I had difficulty finding it. “It has crystals and dirt on it.” . . . "Where?” . . . . “It’s the thing that’s moving!”
“Oh! Oh, my!” Suddenly I am a Minnesotan mom. “Oh, my.” Something translucent and invertebrate pulsating in a hole-punch sized soil sample. Pinworm, perhaps? (Based on later research, probably not.) From across the room, a few moments later, another group issued gleeful cries of, “We found a parasite!” Yes, soil is the place where geology meets biology and becomes habitat. Special attention will be given to hand-washing today!



What we're reading:
Kids Discover Soil
Dirt by Steve "The Dirtmeister" Tomecek (National Geographic)

What I’m reading:
Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv

Groundhogs & ground meat

Last week, it was Chinese New Year. This week, it's Groundhog Day and Dia de la Candelaria.

"Good morning. Did you bring the tamales?" That's how I was greeted by more than one student when we shook hands this morning. Yes . . . well, Mrs. D. did, as did our student who found the baby January 6th. The person who finds the baby on Kings' Day is responsible for bringing tamales to the party on Candelaria, or Candlemas. 40 days after Christmas, Candelaria marks the day Jewish law prescribed that the baby Jesus would be taken to the temple. On this day in Mexico, many families celebrate by dressing the baby Jesus from their Nativity scenes and taking him to the church to be blessed. The term "Candlemas" refers to the practice of priests blessing beeswax candles on this day, to be used throughout the year.

Today also marks the mid-point between Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, hence the association with weather predictions for the second half of winter. Originally, German tradition held that on Candlemas Day a hedgehog would predict the weather. When German settlers came to Pennsylvania, they decided that the groundhog, which resembled the European hedgehog, would serve well for the tradition. In the United States, all eyes now turn to Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day. Six more weeks of winter!

What we're reading:

Geoffrey Groundhog Predicts the Weather by Bruce Koscielniak

Go to Sleep, Groundhog! by Judy Cox

Gregory's Shadow by Don Freeman

Chinese New Year (Rookie Read-About Holidays) by David Marx

Celebrating Chinese New Year by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith

Sam and the Lucky Money by Karen Chinn

Lion Dancer: Ernie Wan's Chinese New Year by Kate Waters

Ruby's Wish by Shirin Yim

The Cable Car and the Dragon by Herb Caen