Special Investigation
The Miracle of Growth from Kantookaski School in Finland
by Kantokaskelaiset

The 5 Stages of Our Saplings The Miracle of Growth: From seeds to saplings, From saplings to trees, From children to young people, From young people to adults. Photo 1: Each pupil has got four seeds for sawing. They put the seeds on four little holes. They cover two of those holes with soil. Photo 2: The seed leaves in the sun. Photo 3: All the seeds germinate. Photo 4: The saplings are planted first in their boxes. Photo 5: Now Niklas, Besim, Sasu, Timo, Toni and Joonas wait summer and sunny days. Now summer is here, the last days have been very warm, over 20c. The woods are suddenly full of wood anemone and hepatica, leaf trees are light green and birds are singing everywhere . We are learning outside always, when it is possible. Our spring is in May, after cool April days: with the first coltfoot and the birches budding. Our Winter is from Novemebr to March when it is cold and snowy in Finland and the lakes and the sea freeze. It is too cold to plant our seedlings when the ground is frozen hard. Instead of that every pupil in our school is going to sow seed of pine tree before Easter. Probably in May/ June, before summer holliday it is time to plant our saplings for the project "Spirit of the Tree 2012". We take photos of that seeding and planting for schoolnet. My special pupils are 9-10 years old and we started with English last Autumn, so their knolidge of it is very small. Because we cannot speak or write English very well, it would be nice to have pen friends, whose English is on the same level as ours. What kind of class would be eager to write us?