Marin Tender Tracks Thurs. Oct. 2, 2014 Day 8

Waxing Moon
Lake Lagunitas

Verse from the story today:
There’s a Star in the Apple
There’s a Star in the Sea
There’s  a Star in the Heavens
And a Star in You and ME!!

Song inside the story today:
My Nice red rosey apple, has a secret yet unseen.
To see if you could see inside 5 rooms so neat and clean.
In each room there are living, 2 pips as black as night.
Asleep they are and dreaming, of the Lovely warm sunlight.

We were very blessed to have Theron and Hana’s Mom’s come  join us today as this is Linsey’s last day away.What a treat it was to have them with us!!!.  Hana’s baby sister joined us too and she was a trooper.  We did discover though that Yellow jackets like POOP!! Changing her diapers proved a bit of trouble towards the end of the day.  I will get back to the yellow jackets a little further down but for now I will say that, besides having beautiful Mom’s join us, we also had a bit of a backwards type circle.  The intention was to use the old fashioned apple peeler that the children hand crank to peel the apples for our snack and to integrate that into the story of this week.  Well, the peeler, for the first time ever, just wasn’t working the way I am used to.  The children didn’t mind a bit nor know any different so one by one they peeled, as best as this little hand cranker would go, their apples and ate them.  After everyone was done and eating THEN we came together for songs and story.  I told the same story as Tuesday, the typical format, about the Star in the Apple and it was still so exciting to see that star show up.  Then there was the invitation to find stars in all sorts of food they eat and to go home and see if stars really ARE in the tomatoes, carrots, broccoli and the like.  I also brought to circle time my Favorite Rock. Tuesday I told a story about how I hurt my eye very badly from the lovely hard rock that I always slept with.  This was used as a “teaching tool” for our own enjoyment of playing with and throwing rocks.  They did really well again, with support and guidance, playing with our most treasured and enjoyable friends, rocks.

We never left our little area and at the end of the day some made mention of that.  The adventure showed itself to be right where we were.  There was:
•Playing in the Redwood stump that had a partially built home.
This turned out to be a Fire Truck actually with a lot of different adventures in that!
•Playing down in the creek
•Playing with the rocks in the creek
• Playing with the logs that had chains on them and seeing how far they would float away from the other logs in the creek
• Splashing feet in the water and watching how their concentric rings touched each other
• Getting hands muddy and holding the California Newts
• Climbing on the rocks
• Throwing dirt in the water and watching what happens
• Listening to a story from a book
• Watching me try to balance and stay out of the water while walking across a log in the water that was rolling around!
I didn’t make it all the way across 🙁 but they cheered me on so nicely
Thea, Nico, Theron and his Mom had fun playing with the Newts, climbing on the rocks and throwing sand in the water.   Everett loved playing with the fire engine along with Jai and at one point I do believe EVERYONE was over there playing.  The groups went in and out. Sometimes all together other times in small little “clans.”  Ariel was very attached to Hana and her Mom and stayed close with them throughout the day. She was more quiet and reservered then any other day so far.  Towards the end of the day Everett, Hana, her Mom, Ariel and I gathered the green Redwood Cones for something we will use them for later in the month.  Velia and Jai were all around this area and wound up sitting on the log all together as they splashed their legs in the water.
The day was like one big long meditation, from my perspective.  It was holding the state of flow: flowing in and out of comfort, non comfort, exploration, stillness, movement and ultimately being with the natural flows of life like waves of the sea going in and out in and out.  And oh, I did not share yet about the yellow jackets.  Well, they were all around us a lot and through patience and a lot of still movements, we saw how to quietly feed them to get them away from us and how to eat our food by taking a bite, covering up our food, taking a bite, covering up our food until we were finished.  No one did get stung and we grown ups, in particular,  were very, very thankful for that!