A Few of the Things That Interest Me

I have lots of things that interest me and I love to pursue my interests in order to learn more about them from other people and to have a better experience with them.  The internet provides a seemingly unlimited number of web sites that are full of interesting and challenging ways for me to improve myself and perhaps give me new ideas of interest.

Sweet corn growing behind bars to keep the pesky raccoons out.

Being a teacher allows me some free time during the summer to pursue some of my interests.  One of them is gardening.  By gardening, I mean intentionally planting things in the soil and working to help them grow.  Right now, I have two vegetable gardens growing on my little five acre farm in Michigan. One of the experiments I am doing this year is to raise all my vegetables organically.  By organic, I mean without the use of pesticides or artificially produced fertilizers.  One of the sites I visit often is called Organic Gardening. This web site is full of interesting and useful articles that help me solve problems and also give me ideas on other things to try.  Today, for example I read the little article on Super Sturdy Tomato Cages and have actually made five similar ones already, and I really like them.  They have the added benefit of keeping nosey chickens away from my tasty tomatoes! Another web site I love to visit is called Mother Earth News. This site not only has loads of interesting and useful articles on gardening, but it also has a huge variety of the latest thinking on just about everything, from global warming to getting your house off the grid. 

Adirondack Chairs under our trees.

Another area of interest I have is wood-working.  I like to build things out of wood.  I am not a craftsman by any means, but I can generally build the things I like and they look good when I am finished.  For example, one of the things I like to build is a good old-fashioned Adirondack Chair. I enjoy watching Norm on the "New Yankee Workshop" TV show as he IS a craftsman and I learn a lot by just watching what he does.  He has a video demonstrating how to build an Adirondack chair and it is very helpful to get little tips that make the construction go better and the chair will look better as well.  I have just been asked by my son and his Fiancé to build two chairs for their wedding, (which is later this summer on my farm).  They want to use the chairs in some way for guests to sign or leave a wedding wish or something.  I am not sure, and I don't think they are either.  However, I am getting ready to build two chairs.  I also am going to build them a Cornhole game. We have one already that I built several years ago and it is the center of a lot of fun when we have groups over to the farm.  We are going to paint their silhouettes on each of the cornhole boards, thus creating another cool wedding memory. 

Pure maple sap dripping on a sunny day in February.

Living out in the country allows me to try all sorts of things I may not have thought about while living in town.  Two years ago, I got a hankering to try my hand at making maple syrup.  Having quite a few maple trees on our property gave me the push I needed, so I found another interest: making my own syrup.  I went to a local maple syrup farm and learned a few things to get started and now I make two to three gallons each February-March and share it with my family.  I find it relaxing and also a good time to get caught up on some reading.  What else do you do when you are boiling forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of pure maple syrup?  From tapping the trees to gathering the sap, I find this a fulfilling hobby and also one that reaps sweet rewards.  I like to build a fire out by the woodshed and get the sap boiling.  My neighbor came over this year and he got hooked as well.  He is a welder, so he built a very handy boiling system that allows him to have the sap drip in at one end and golden syrup drip out the other.  I need to get him to make me one of those!

End of the Year Team Project

One of the groups measuring out one of their walls

As this school year was winding down, we fourth grade teachers wanted to give our students a project that would bond them together as a group as they head into middle school next year.  We had already divided them into nine groups for their 5th grade placements in the fall, so we decided to use those groups, without letting them know they were working with next year's classmates. For the past few years, we had been kicking around the idea of having the students build pneumatic geometric structures, using only 500 sq. ft. of neoprene and several rolls of duct tape for construction. They needed a fan of some sort to inflate their structure once it was completed.  Another criteria was that the structure had to be large enough for their entire group to fit inside simultaneously and read once construction was complete.

Hmm, this is our ceiling.  Will we all fit inside?

The groups had to first work together to come up with a geometric shape and then with graph paper, they had to create a scale model.  This demonstrated their math skills as they had to determine square footage of all the sides and also figure out how much tape they would use on the edges.  Then they had to wrestle with the idea of the volume of air inside their proposed structure and decide if the fan they had would be enough to inflate it.  This was such a great activity for them to HAVE to work together and work on their math skills, comunication skills, small motor skills for drawing and cutting and then the most difficult part of all, was the actual construction of their structure.  Our only input was to answer direct questions that showed that they had struggled with the issue and were at an impasse.  Also, if a group was arguing too much, (we told them a little arguing is good for learning and cooperation), or if group members were goofing around, the team would be penalized with the loss of 50 sq. ft. of neoprene for each incident.  We didn't have to penalize any team!

They didn't think they could do it, but they learned something about themselves!

Various structures in the gym, all working!

Brian gives his opinion on the project through a vent hole he made!

All in all, this was an unbelievable project for our fourth graders to take on.  They were hard-working, creative, and they never gave up.  If something wasn't working, they would simply try something else.  The only time a teacher had to actually help was with the taping for a group that had designed a structure with curved sides.  That took the entire group, working together, as well as the teacher to get the taping done and the structure inflated!  After all the structures were completed, every class in the entire school came down two at a time to wander through our new village and go inside and have a fourth grader read a story to them. I think we have a new tradition for the end of the school year for all students in our building to look forward to.  Some will be building the pneumatic structures and most will be experiencing them and sitting in them, perhaps planning for when it is his/her turn?