Sunfield Waldorf School will be closed Friday, January 20, for a snow day. January 17, 18, and 19 were also snow closure days.

This winter, Sunfield Waldorf School is one of five local schools participating in the eighth annual Plant-A-Thon, a fundraising environmental service project.

Plant-A-Thon tree plantings will take place along Tarboo Creek, just north of Tarboo Wildlife Refuge on a property owned and managed by Northwest Watershed Institute. Tree planting is an important part of the watershed-wide effort to restore native salmon and wildlife habitat. To date, 23,500 trees have been planted in the Tarboo Watershed through Plant-A-Thon activities.

This year’s planting of 2,500 trees will take place on Saturday, January 28 (rain date is Saturday, February 5) from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., by 150 school children and parents from Sunfield, Swan School, Chimacum Pi Program, Quilcene Elementary, and Jefferson Community School, along with University of Washington students. The group will be organized into planting crews, each with a trained leader. Crew leader training is Saturday, January 21, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., at Sunfield.

For each of the 2,500 native trees planted at a salmon restoration site in the Tarboo, there is a corresponding “Tree Card,” dedicating the tree in honor of someone or something special.

In past years, cards have been sent across the USA, and as far as China, France, and Indonesia. People have sent thousands of Tree Cards for holidays, births, deaths, birthdays, and to thank significant people in their lives, such as relatives, friends and teachers. The cards are also sent by businesses to appreciate their clients.

In an effort to earn $2,500, our school is selling 500 tree cards, at $5 each.

Please contact the Sunfield office (360-385-3658) to purchase Tree Cards, or to volunteer with our crew.

This year’s planting site is on a steep slope, and may not be suitable for very young children. Lunch and hot drinks are provided.

Sunfield Waldorf School presented Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol full of authentic Victorian charm.

In this classic tale, the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge meets the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. The experience is transformative for him, and the audience, in this production under the direction of teacher Helen Curry, on Friday and Saturday, December 9 and 10, at 7 p.m. in the Chimacum Grange Hall.

Curry does justice to Charles Dickens’s rich descriptions within a minimalist theater environment, without the use of technical effects.

The musical cadences of traditional market street cries, children’s singing games, and English carols create atmosphere for the stage adaptation of the tale performed by the seventh- and eighth-grade students of Sunfield Waldorf School, and accompanied by members of the third- and fourth-grade class.

“I like to weave living layers into the fabric of the play with authentic songs and musical games of the period. I also feel it is extremely important to retain the language of this classic work,” said Curry, teacher of the seventh/eighth grade class.

Her students spent a month listening to the story from the original text and developing improvisations before they were introduced to the play script.

“By then the students were able to live into the place and period in history,” said Curry. “They could feel the dankness, smell the coal fires, taste the smog. They understood how some of London’s citizens took their Sunday meals to be baked in the baker’s ovens, they knew about the workhouses, the debtors’ prisons and youngsters’ apprenticeships to masters.”

A Christmas Carol gained immediate popularity in Victorian England, and is attributed with being influential in creating the atmosphere of how Christmas is celebrated in Western culture today, with festive gatherings and generosity of spirit.

Through the play, we experience the beauty of joy, light, and warmth of the festive season and the darkness, cold, poverty, and ugliness that is its contrast. The lessons that Scrooge learns ultimately transform him, and us, as we experience happiness and generosity along with Scrooge at the play’s end.

A Christmas Carol was presented at 7 p.m. on Friday, December 9, and Saturday, December 10, at the Chimacum Grange Hall, opposite Chimacum Schools on Rhody Drive. Entry was free, and donations welcomed.

For more information on the performances, please contact Sunfield Waldorf School at 385-3658.

Grandparents Day is a special event for all Sunfield students on Wednesday, November 23. We honor grandparents with their own special day to experience Sunfield with their grandchild.

For grade school students, grandparents start the day in their grandchild’s class with a main lesson at 8:30 a.m. This is a great opportunity for grandparents to discover what their grandchild is learning. At 10 a.m. everyone joins in an all school assembly, with a tea for the grandparents following in Ms. Curry’s classroom at 10:30 a.m. Hale and hearty grandparents may also join in farm chores at 11 a.m. if they wish.

For grandparents of kindergartners, the day starts with the tea in Ms. Curry’s room at 10:30. At 11 o’clock, grandparents are invited to join in craft activities in the kindergarten classroom.

Of course grandparents are welcome to choose to schedule their day with any segment that best fits their circumstances. The most important thing is to share the Sunfield experience with each other, in the way that best suits grandparent and grandchild. Welcome!