#Earthschooling365: Day Forty-Five
Inner Work Meditation (Heart): It was a cold and rainy day today and as I walked along I saw a small baby groundhog laying by the side of the creek. At first I was excited because I had never seen a baby groundhog before. But my excitement turned to worry when I realized he was not moving. Since he was located in a place I could not reach him I decided simply to check on him when I came back along my walk in a half hour. When I came back I was relieved to see he was gone. This could only mean one thing – his mother had retrieved him. She was probably so happy to find him so close to home and be able to put him safely back into the den. That naughty little wandering groundhog! She had tucked all her little hogglets in bed and went off to find food. She assumed they would all stay safely tucked away. For why would they not? This was how life was supposed to be.
Do you ever find yourself thinking in that way? Do you ever proceed with your part of the day and expect that everything else will happen “as it should”? When we serve snack time for our students we expect them to eat. When we teach a lesson we expect the students will listen. When we drive to the grocery store we expect we will arrive and buy our groceries and come home again. We spend a lot of time assuming that everything will go “as it should” just like mama groundhog did.
Instead of thinking that way right now, take ten minutes to think about all the things that didn’t go wrong today. We often forget to take time to be thankful for those things. We take so much time assuming that life will go as planned (and perhaps even complaining when it does not) that we forget to stop and simply say, “wow!” at the miracle life is itself. If you take ten minutes to think about all the factors that have to fall into place for life to actually “go as we expect it to” you will realize that these factors are a miracle and the real miracle in life is that is does, so often, run smoothly. If life were a math equation it would never work on paper. Just going to the grocery store there are so many factors – weather, other people, our health, the mechanics of our car, of the trucks delivering the groceries – and so much more. For all those factors to smoothly work together and result in a successful trip to the grocery store is an absolute miracle (among so many other miracles) we can celebrate every day.
Nature Walk Idea (Head): You may notice from the photo today that the baby groundhog is lying among some trash that has been discarded along the creek. We already did some “cleanliness awareness” and nature trail clean up a few weeks ago. However, today let’s take a closer look at what this trash is doing to the environment around us. If you are not able to do a full trash pick up day today that is OK. However, make it a goal to pick up at least five pieces and for each of those pieces look really closely and talk about or think about how that one piece of trash was impacting the world around it. Did you find it in a creek where it was leeching contaminants into the water? Did you find it wrapped around an animal? Did you find it covering some plants that were dying because they could not get enough light? Older children could take this a step further and write about their observations.
Photography Notes (Hands): Today we will explore aperture in a more practical manner. The past two days we have learned what aperture is and how it works. Now we will do some “hands on” assignments to see how you can use aperture to achieve different effects with your photos. Rather than pushing too much information our heads at once it is always best to start with one concept at a time. Using this technique you can build on a solid base of experience and knowledge before moving on to the next step. So rather than tell you about everything aperture can do we will do one thing each day for a few days so you get a real “hands on” feel for what aperture can do. Then, at the end of all these lessons we will put it together and it will make a lot more sense to you.
So your assignment today is to take all your photos with a low aperture – this means that you should use an aperture that is 4.5 or below if possible. You may need to adjust your shutter speed or ISO to make this possible but this can be easily done by the camera if you use the “Aperture Priority” mode on your camera. This is often the A or Av button on your camera. When you set your camera in one of these modes it allows you to set the aperture you want and the camera will then automatically adjust everything else to make sure the aperture you chose does not change.
After you get home from your walk take note of what this low aperture did for your photos. Are there any observations you can make? You should observe that with the low aperture you used that only a small portion of your photo is in focus and that the background and/or things in the background/foreground of your subject may be blurry. This is often a very desired effect – especially in portraits. However, it is not always desirable. How did this effect work well with your photos today. Are there some photos where this did not work well?
Would you like some poetry lessons or other writing lessons for your classroom? Check out our Third Grade Language Block, Fourth Grade Language Block, Fifth Grade Language Block, Sixth Grade Language Block, Seventh Grade Language Block or our entire Language Arts Package that covers language lessons from first grade to eighth grade.
Verse: My Bed
Copyright Kristie Burns
This can easily be made into a finger-rhyme or done with hand motions.
Dark and muddy
Slippery and dank
Groundhog’s bed lies
On the cool creek bank
Prickly and stickly
Twigs and dried leaves
An eagle’s bed lies
In the cottonwood trees
Dewy and grassy
Shared with spiders and flies
A fawn’s bed
In the meadow lies
Snuggly and soft
A kitten’s purr
My own bed is
The one I prefer
*These poems have been created for many purposes – from early childhood circle time verses to inspirational or expressive. They vary from day to day so you may find the way you use them or enjoy them also varies. If you would like to set these poems to music consider our tutorial: Creating Your Ow Waldorf Verses or Finding Your Inner Voice.
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What is #Earthschooling365?
This series takes you through an entire year of our nature walks and is part of our non-profit project #Earthschooling365 at www.Earthschooling.org. The photos and posts in this series are all copyrighted. Please do not share or re-print them. Instead, share the link to this blog with your friends.
Along the way I will be sharing our favorite photo of the day, an inner work meditation for the day, photography assignment/tip for the day, nature walk theme for the day and a short verse for circle time (children) or meditation (teens/adults). We invite you to “walk along with us” this year, take some time to use the inner work meditation, be inspired by the nature walk theme of the day and perhaps even start a photo series of your own. To join the community on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram please tag your photos #Earthschooling365. To receive these inspirations in your e-mail inbox daily please subscribe to our blog alerts HERE. Don’t worry about missing days – you can join us as many days as you want this year!
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