Marin Tender Tracks Tue. March 10, 2015 Day 45

Waning Gibbous Moon
Lake Lagunitas

The day began with great and magickal fog rolling in all over our town. As we drove into the Lakes area we could barely see the lake at all. No deers grazing could be seen and when we got to our usual spot, there was a whole group of older kids and adults there so, we went to our other familiar spot to set up our play space for the day very near our usual place.
For us teachers the focus today was to provide lot’s of different hands on things to explore with: hammer and nails, wash boards and sheeps wool to clean down by the creek, pecans and acorns to be cracked and little pots to be filled with soil and seeds to take home and watch grow.
Enzo stayed with the hammering most of the day. He REALLY, REALLY, REALLY liked this and had no interest in anything else and never did plant seeds in his little pot. Thea, Velia and Theron really liked washing wool down by the waters edge and ate there too because they said ‘it was so peaceful and the water was so beautiful to look at.’
Michelle aided Julian, Jai,and  I think Enzo in building a house with hammer and nails.  Julian in particular REALLY, REALLY, REALLY  liked this. They also used the saw with her to make the pieces of wood just right.
At one point all of the children found a long log and were stretched out on it hammering and hammering their nails in as well as hammering open pecans.  After they left that area and some time later they began hammering nails into the earth but then, there were no more nails!  “Are there any more?” they asked. But alas, they had used them all up. However, they figured out how to take them out again and reuse them!
Making sure the hammers and all tools are put back right where they came from comes easy for some and challenging for others yet we DID end the day with the same amount that we started with.  YEAH!!!
The children’s days have been moments of extreme peacefulness and unity and then explosion and different degrees of chaos and/or scattered into many directions.
Circle time came in with beauty and then half needed to disburse at story time. That group went with Michelle down to the creek and Ariel, Thea,Velia and Nico stayed for the story.
The other group came back just in time to help clean up and carry on.
It was nice to see these different explorations take place with different groups and Michelle and I exchanged places often between the movings about of the children’s interests.
After planting the seeds there was a desire to all play with the one squirt bottle so I introduced a game called Fire Tender.  This is a game where one person is the Fire Tender. They sit with their eyes closed with a stick in front of them and holding the squirt bottle.  Their job is to protect the stick as if it was the middle of the night and they can’t see but they can hear. If they hear someone trying to take it they squirt the bottle in the direction of the sound that they hear. If they hit the target/person that person hit has to go back to the starting place.
One person at a time works at stalking up (quietly of course) to get the stick without being heard and then walk away quietly as well.  Velia, Hana, Ariel and Jai took the most interest in the game.  It started out with most of them and then the first three were the ones that really liked it and wanted to continue.   The rest went with Michelle to explore across the road.
We finally went to see what they were doing. They found a horse trough filled with water, tall bars to swing on and a wonderful tree to climb.  Jai, Thea and Nico were climbing, Julian was all about running and bumping into folks, Hana and Velia wanted to continue with Fire Tender, but first I played with Hana and Thea “baseball” with a pine cone and stick.  Theron and Enzo were really into the water trough as the others played in and out with this as well.  And, Enzo, fell in!  Yes, all the way in.   I never got clear he how he actually did that as it was high but in deed right as I was going to give them one more minute to play he fell in.
Ariel was a bit wet too and very upset about this so she and Enzo went with Michelle to get changed  and I took the wild rest.  They were ready to settle down but could not so I brought them into a story of the day: a story all about them! and the day.  They were quiet and very involved.
When we all got into the bus I took out our special Talking Stick and they each gave a thank you and three shakes or a Pass.