The P.E. coach at my school asked if I wanted to join him and another teacher for a drink after school. “Sorry, Coach,” I replied, “I have to take care of my kids.”

Astonished, he replied, “I didn’t know you had babies at home.”

I explained that I did, in fact, have baby sprouts in the garden and that they needed to be watered.

And aren’t they so cute? The white onions are doing really well. We’ve also got radishes, red onions, and wild flowers. No sign of the carrots or spinach.

A couple of sprouts have appeared in each hole, so I simply snipped them down to one (since … Read More

I am happy to report that Matt and I made the switch to glass for our portable water bottles (goodbye, Nalgene!).

We shopped around Whole Foods to find suitable bottles. We thought about applesauce jars, but those were only 25 ounces (as opposed to our 32-ounce Nalgenes). I found the perfect grape juice jar, and Matt found a cocktail mixer bottle, which had a narrow spout, similar to his Nalgene.

My friend, Claire, is a fellow teacher and she expressed concern about the breakability of glass in a classroom environment.

As a Montessori teacher, we have glass all over the classroom (even in the infant/toddler classrooms) because it cultivates carefulness. … Read More

I’ve been really, really trying to emphasize the first “R” of the three-R’s in the arrow, but I had to break down and buy a new book–Go Green: How to Build an Earth-Friendly Community. It’s super-reader friendly and full of next steps.

Among them:

1. Get an energy audit done on our house to reveal all the hidden ways we’re wasting energy and to help us prioritize our next steps.
2. Replace all our incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent lightbulbs (I think we’ve done this for the most part, but I’m not sure).
3. Look into getting a tankless water heater.
4. Plug everything into power strips that can be turned off