Palo Alto Tender Tracks Tues. March 12, 2013

New Moon
Day 47
Huddart Park

Kaden, Taz and Paul were all out today.  That left six children, Jill and I.  I was sad to miss all three of these treasures as today the children received their very special JOBS!  After getting in the bus and taking care of bus things, we made our way to Huddart Park. There they ran out straight to the huge volley ball sand pit and found already existing grand castles and holes in the ground.  While they were busy with this, I set up circle.  When their bodies were ready they just congregated over to snack, eating and then settling in.  I told them a St. Patricks day type of story that was to lead them into seeing the beauty all around and the benefit of helping one another. This led straight into receiving their new jobs to help Tender Tracks work more smoothly.  It seems that this was all in great timing because they took right to it!

JOBS:
•Weather Watcher: the holder of the counting stick to see what the wind is sharing as it blows or not the feather.
•Guardians of Safety:  two children each get their own little first aid kit to carry on their backpacks
•Guardians of the Earth: Two get to work together putting and finding garbage to put in a little bag that gets attached to their backpack.
•Guardians of Direction: They get to help us find our way back from our adventures.
• Map Maker/Story of the day: Two children any time after lunch draw in a special paper/map holder, their story/map of the day.  An adult writes down what they write and then we share it at the end of the day.

Each job gets much help from us so that they learn different aspects of these jobs.

Evan and Miu were the Guardians of Safety and Miu did most of the work, beginning with EVAN!
And Evan helped someone towards the end of the day.
Emme and Giselle were Guardians of Direction and found our way back.
Alice and Aoife were the Map Makers and they were wonderful with drawing the map of the day as well as parts of the day that stuck out in their minds.

I very much wanted to take the children down to a special spot in Huddart park that has water, creek, and much,much beauty.  I brought them down by way of an off trail slope for a short cut and they all did GREAT with this.  Giselle really wanted to go barefoot and Jill stayed with her the whole way as she carefully let her feet get comfortable on the Earth.  She is such an  incredible explorer!!!
Aoife was running with the group along the trail and when we got to where we were going she enjoyed just sitting and eating as well as watching the Banana Slug that Evan gave some apple to while the others played down at the creek.  I stayed with her for a time and it was so peaceful and sweet.
Miu and Alice ran straight down to the water when we got to our place and it took a bit of coaxing to get them to eat, which actually Alice never really did.    They explored in that water, took off their shoes, and Alice said something like, this is the best day or the best place at Tender Tracks! Jill shared this with me.    Emme just wandered down the creek on her own and was in heaven exploring peacefully the ebbs and flows of the water and the rocks.   Evan had fun with making rock paint and then painting his hair.  He was really excited about this!!!!
It was hard to believe that the time flew by as it did because we did have to go.    We went back up another little short cut.  Jill was with all the children accept Emme and Evan who were with me.  I told the two of them several stories as we walked up and up and up the trail until we finally made it back to the bus.
We shared all of our great thank you’s in the bus and the story maps were shared too with more elaboration.  Jill, at the beginning of the day shared with the children a book she had made about the traditional Japanese song Sakura.  She sang it in Japanese and English.  On the way back the children wanted her to sing it again and again. Only in Spanish, French and… this was a bit funny and fun. She just had the Japanese and English down though.  There were then more songs sung.