I’d just been to Seven Hills-Lotspeich. How could another school day be just as fun? Well, if you’re at the other Seven Hills Campus—Doherty. It can! This Cincinnatti school just percolates with life. If I were going to be a teacher, I’d want to work in one of the Seven Hills Schools.

Why? Because excellent schools need faculty that care for one another, that lunch together, that chat and exchange ideas.  This school has it on both campuses. Education can be joyous when staff share that passion for helping students. But left alone in classrooms, teachers can grow isolated, like stay-at-home moms who love their kids but need some grownup time now and then. Staff development makes it sound all technical. That is helpful. But the core of the best schools I have seen is a caring staff community: community that nurtures creative teachers and does not squash them. You could see it at work, hear it at work during my lunch with some of the Doherty teachers.

Seven Hills also has another community that uplifts the place. The parents. Wow. They pitch in for all kinds of things. At the whirling center of joy is librarian Linda Wolfe who I had the pleasure of spending the day with.

She is a dynamo who knows children’s literature inside out. She created wonderful activities to go with my books. Just look at what they did with Vulture View. She found some kind of scratch paper that is black with silver underneath. The students cut out vultures and scratched through to make the beautiful silvering of the feathers.

She describes how she introduces Trout Are Made of Trees to her students. To celebrate the book, she used a scale/math/art activity. She gave kids large photos of the aquatic insects. Then the children had to draw them, as accurately as possible, on the tiny pieces of paper. It’s a good thinking project. You can just imagine how many neurons fire when trying to duplicate but shrink an image.

In the halls were more art projects to celebrate If You Should Hear a Honey Guide; Dig, Wait, Listen; and other books. Penguins for Antarctica. Maps of South America. There was art of many kinds.

Among my favorites was an organizational project done by Mr. Schmidt’s class. They took my books and graphed them in various ways to show the content and relationships in the books. It’s a good way to prepare for writing books of their own.

I saw and experienced all of this in one short school day at Seven Hills Doherty. Just imagine what a student could learn in a school year of being with these hard working, creative educators.

This was the first time I’d seen activities for the new Turtle, Turtle, Watch Out. There were turtle shape poems which looked like ancient, beautiful style art. What about these wild pine cone birds for Bird, Bird, Bird? Extraordinary.

What a lovely school. The science teacher, Ms. Wildfong, showed me the science building. They have lots of animals. It really feels like a science-in-action place.

The music teacher, Ms. Wilson, shared the use of Bird, Bird, Bird: a Chirping Chant. She was teaching kids the half and quarter notes and how to use the staff by getting them to sound out and choose among a few notes to set this book to music.

The art teacher, Ms. Knoop was a wonder. Love her! She’s made a creative space, complete with old plastic toy color wheel, great supply drawers, and projects galore. She partners with another teacher to do a whole big unit on fibers. Ms. Knoop brings in wool from her sheep and they dye it with natural plant dyes and spin it. Wow. Hands on science and history and art all at the same time.

Thanks, Seven Hills, for an inspiring day. Your students and staff are great! Lunching with with these joyful, dedicated educators was a pleasure. Their ideas popped like popcorn. Really, it was like being in some of the great creative meetings I had at National Geographic. You walk away uplifted and refreshed.

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/howler-monkey.html

Equally good sounds are on an NPR story about Greg Budney, the noted sound recordist. It takes a while for the NPR player to load, so be patient:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92926828

Also, check out Naturesongs, which has lots of recordings of different types of creatures in this and other habitats.

http://www.naturesongs.com/costa.html

Happy Howling!

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of the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality

This uses Stars Beneath Your Bed.

http://bringbackblue.com/assets/uploads/files/K-3(1).pdf

http://www.unitedthroughreading.org/about/greattransitionalbooks_justthefacts.php

I could have featured this creature in November.

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www.blueberryranch.com

This quote is from Chrissy Larson, the teacher Balsam of the Nuts about Nature Preschool run by the   Portland Environmental Education Department. She wrote to me this week. Below are some photos she took of her activities.1) The teachers and kids create some appropriately gooey looking “carrion”

2) The kids make vulture shapes and attach them to paper airplanes.

3) They practice soaring like vultures. Notice the proper vulture wing posture of the kids in the photo! (See first photo.)

Anyway, it’s January and I am dreaming over my seed catalogs and copies of Organic Gardening Magazine. Just opening the freezer and taking out homegrown chard, peppers, and raspberries makes me intensely happy. In full on gardening season, I am in love with vines and sprouts and soil. Really, non-gardeners think I’m a bit nuts. But you green thumbs, you understand.

Every day since than I have cooked at least one Indian recipe. Finally, after years of failing at Indian cooking, I am succeeding. Here is why. This cookbook, From Mom With Love…Complete Guide to Indian Cooking and Entertaining, is perfect for someone starting out. It tells you what to buy and the recipes are foolproof. Go to the dal section and cook the Sabut Masoor Dal Amti or the Sambhar Dal and you will think you’ve found a bit of spice heaven. The book is available on Amazon. Warning: a few of its pages are bound out of order, but don’t worry, they are all there.

For some of the non-dal recipes I reduce the heat of the recipes by decreasing the chili powder and ginger by 2/3. That’s still spicy for me.

It all started when my sister bid and won a school auction for an Indian cooking lesson. (This is a great way to raise funds for a school. Adapt to any cuisine you have.) I was there for the lesson. The woman who gave us the lesson gave my sister this wonderful cookbook, apparently written by her aunt.  Later, my sister sent me a copy of the book and all the items. But really, the lesson, though enjoyable, wasn’t necessary. It’s all there in the book.

I loved putting the spices into the spice box. It is handy and beautiful. Just pull it out and scoop the necessary items into the pan.

The back of the book has recipes for some spice mixes. You can buy them, of course. But I chose to make my own sambhar powder, using store bought spices and red chiles from my summer garden.

Every recipe has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, comparable to the best Indian food I have had in big cities. I even made peshwari naan by adding nuts and coconut to the recipe in the book.