Tomorrow is the Teacher Focus Group meeting! I'm excited! I know that at least 3 teachers are coming.
In addition, student permission slips and interest forms have started flowing in. I'm ecstatic about the support!
I just read a fascinating book by David Sobel called Children's Special Places: Exploring the Role of Forts, Dens, and Bush Houses in Middle Childhood. It talks about the importance of self-made places, specifically those outside that adults don't enter, in the creation of identity and participation in community and the foundation for a land ethic...
It made me think about forts and such I had as a child. I've noticed that on some, more highly read blogs, bloggers post an answer to a question and then their readers do to. I'm going to try that.
The question: Did you have a childhood fort? Describe it or when you went to it or who you went to it with.
Fort #1: The cherry trees at my grandmas house
Description: 2 cherry blossom trees near the road in front of my grandparents house
When we went to it: whenever the extended family was over, sometimes by myself to climb, sometimes to read
Who I went with: my big sister, little brother, and cousins. The older cousins got the better tree, with easily accessible branches. I was the fourth oldest, so I got the other tree. We had to use a stool to climb it. We had elaborate ritual to decide who got to come in. We always climbed up to our assigned branches in a specific order to avoid stepping on each other.
Now, I'm off to Starbucks to purchase gift cards for teachers at the meeting tomorrow.
Happy Wednesday!
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Definite yes on childhood forts! Many of them.
ReplyDeleteInside: my brother and I would build them out of blankets and couches, all over the living room.
Outside: at my old house, we had a 'camouflage' tree fort, which was build up in a hazelnut tree and was a platform with low walls. I used to pick strings of hazelnut flowers up there in the spring and make bracelets out of them.
After we moved, we had an acre or so of woods, so we had lots of forts and special places. My dad helped my friends and I build another tree fort, and my brother and his friends build another near it. I built mine mostly with my friend Katie. We had a chain link ladder that came down from a trap door to get up in it. It was in an alder tree near a pond. We could pull up the ladder once we were up there, so theoretically no one else could get in! Although, they could just climb the tree...We also made our own toilet! It was probably not a good idea. But we considered ourselves great inventors. It was a plant pot with a paper towel tube as a pipe duct-taped to one of the drainage holes at the bottom of the plant pot.
We also had less-structured hideouts in the woods. It made the places seem special.
Sorry this is super long!
Have you seen the lengths of my posts? Keep it coming!!!
ReplyDeleteQuestion (you don't have to divulge this if you don't want to): Did the toilet get used?
I want to come see your forts!!! How is Europe?