Tender Tracks Tues./Thurs. 9/11/2012

September 11, 2012
Waning Crescent Moon
Embarcadero Duck Pond
Day 3

What a very, very beautiful day.  How delightful, imaginative, inclusive, friendly, alive and vibrant, to use a few descriptive words, your children are!!!  Truly!   They began the day with many games and fun before circle time.  They played on the Laying Down tree, the Redwood Stump and ran about.  I invited them to do races on the lawn and to see if there was dew upon it because:  When dew is on the grass the ran will pass. When the grass is dry, rain will come nigh.  So, we checked the grass, it was wet, and then running and running took place until they finally ran to circle.

Emme and Alice were filled with far too many dog and animal sounds to take part in circle so they went off to play with Jill for a time.  They finally came back with wings of birds yet ready to join the circle time in the human forms.   (Unfortunately, to sing our songs at this time of year it is so very hard to do so in Doggy language.  We will save that for a future date when this will be most delightful!)  We also had some competition from a beautiful Guardian of the Park who was dumping more compost.  Evan was MOST intrigued and focused on this so we wound up singing him some of our songs and then waved him joyfully good bye as he left. I almost finished cleaning up our stick that we gathered last Thursday and put the feather we found on it.  We then counted how many days we have been together and watched the Wind Children blow, just a little, the feather around.  We then had our snack and Alice and Evan really like to put out, ALREADY!  the Thank You plate/snack on a leaf as an offering of gratitude.  And, part of the snack was a give from Evan and his Mom: Apples from their Apple tree.
Miu does not, so far, like to sit on her own mat but to sit right in between Gieselle and Aoife, and this is just fine.  We had a bit of a long story about Earth Namer, you can find it in the library.  It is about the beginning of all things and how it all got to be here. One of the biggest things I focus on in this telling is of singing things Welcoming songs.  In the story there was a Welcoming song to the Sun and then to the  Moon.  Eventually we will have a very “advanced” welcoming song to the directions/North, South, East , West, Above, Below and The Heart that Holds It All Together.  But that, as I said, will come later.

After snack they went right off to play with one another.  Miu asked Paul if he would come and play with her on the Laying Down tree and he said yes, while the others, lead by Alice, played “Family” on the Redwood Stump.  Emme was ready to go so into the bus we went followed by the ritual of passing out stuffies, and then looking at our Moon Board at the head of the Bus.

We were greeted at the Duck Pond with the worse smell I have EVER smelled at the Duck Pond. Usually it is stinky but this was absolutely AWFUL. Luckily it was pretty much just where the bus was so we moved to a place I take the children any way and then that was fine.  They ate, or some, played, ran, and we gathered feathers to make a Feathered rope like in the story from today.  There are many, many feathers there at the Duck pond so easy to gather.  Evan was scared yet drawn to the Geese and the ducks. He, Miu and Kaden went exploring around a bit of the pond to find and look at the ducks.  Miu and Giselle and sometimes Emme would sit at times just starring at the ducks. PERFECT!!!   Paul was very familiar with this place and was not troubled about going inside the Bush house that was there but some others discovered Ants all over and were less enthrawlled so they came out.   They climbed and played on the wonderful uneven stumps that are at the pond just for children to test their balancing skills and then, we packed up to go on a grand adventure for the day.

I brought them through the  Fennel, Mugwort and Starthistle forests.  This was quite the challenge as the trail was thin and the brambles in the way at times large.  But they did it with great bravery and style.  We wound up on a trail where there was a beautiful flowing water run that went under a bridge.  We began following this so that we could make it to the Magickal and old ruin of a CASLTLE!!!!  “Are princesses there?” asked Emme”  “Are there princess clothes?”  “Are their Knights there”  asked the boys. All along the trail we walked until, we made it there with the Guardians holes all around.  Guardians being: Ground Squirrels!!!

This “Magickal Castle” is actually some kind of arrangement of old concrete bricks that I have never understood nor found anyone to explain to me how they actually got there so SURELY it must be the ruins of a mightly and wonderful CASTLE!! Wouldn’t you agree???

They had a very good time playing there creating all manner of games.  There are a great deal of small rocks that make up a lot of the land around there as ground cover. Aoife was the first to discover this and had a GREAT time making Angels in the small stones.
I don’t actually know how she did it because to lay on them they were so very, very hot!  She seemed to be just fine.   I took off my shoes and dug under to find the cool stones and Emme and Gieselle joined us.  Then Jill and Kadan.  But Kadan wanted a great and mighty sword so we went searching all around the Coyote Brush that was surrounding the entire land mass!   He was fine for a while but, Paul had a BETTER sword then he so we went on another search and sure enough found one.  But in the end it was not as strong as Paul’s and he was a bit unhappy about this.

Before the day ended all came with me to the waters edge at the dock there to explore and play accept Emme and Paul who stayed with Jill at the Castle.  Those of us who went to the water took off our shoes and played Splash and Keep the Boat, we pretended we were on, afloat.  Miu really didn’t want to leave and wanted the day to be much longer. However, we had to leave and packed up we got and off we went.

We really were a bit late so Kaden, Evan and I raced to the bus, got in and went to pick up the rest of the children at the other parking space then back to the park we came. Oh but oh yes, Alice said she could not find her waterbottle so Jill ran back to find it but alas, it was no where to be seen.  In someone else’s back pack maybe?  We can only hope!!!!

A beautiful and very pleasant day.