Marin Tender Tracks Wed. Feb. 24, 2016 Day 20

Waning Crescent Moon
Bon Tempe

Kuba was away to Hawaii and Linda was out sick.
We sent them love and warmth and they were missed!
However, we spent the day gloriously basking in the warm Sun’s Rays and exploring a new place.
The really great high lights were deep observation of a Great White Egret, many turtles, bugs, water, concentric rings and different sounds that came from throwing different shapes and sizes into the lake and looking, looking for all the fresh and new Poison Oak buds!
Isabella and Eli were having the time of their lives being mischievous and raucous.  Ruby was involved in seeing the small wonders at every turn and LOVING playing in water. Kai was relearning how to play in ways that others would like and communicating what he really wants, and Eli, Isabella and Kai were really liking pushing others yet NONE of them liked BEING pushed. Hmmm, isn’t that something!? 🙂
The day was truly filled with a lot of social and very gentle conflict resolution. It went so beautifully too!  Their communication skills and willingness to hear each other and respond with kindness was probably the best I have ever seen.  Your children are so very sweet and so very kind and so very developmentally on target.  The entire day was just tender!
We went on a journey to see the turtles but as we approached they popped off their log and went away. We decided to just sit there and eat lunch hoping that the turtles would then come back. We spent a long time very engaged with watching how and when the turtles would come back. We wondered if they got scared from sound, movement or both so we did a lot of experimenting to see.   Isabella really wanted to see if she could scare them away.   They then found a puddle and Ruby mostly, was VERY excited about this. She finally just let herself fall right into it with great glee!
When we walked back we found another beautiful spot with many more turtles to look at much farther away across the lake.  We sat down there and then started to play many games. One of them was them becoming turtles. Every time I would come by them in a way that was scarey to them they would cover their heads and when they felt safe they would come out.  This then turned into races being slow turtles and then many other animals. Eli and Isabella wanted to go fast while Ruby and Kai wanted to go slow.  Then they all wound up going slow.   There was a good amount of playing the pushing game:  They take their hands and push up against mine to see if they could push me over.  Well they finally just all piled on me!
The true highlights of the day from my perspective was the amount of unawares intense observation of the natural world that was actually going on all in play.  It was profound and glorious and the day was just plain fun!