Palo Alto Tender Tracks Wednesday April 23, 2014 Day 30

Waning Moon
Stevens Creek Open Space Preserve

What a fun and beautiful day.  We went straight to this place and began gathering materials to make a fire in order to make natural dyes from tea bags and onion skins.  They all helped gather and then sing the fire awake.
The pots were put on to boil, onion skins and black tea bags put in and as we watched it on and off we also went off to play right where we were.  There is  a creek there and great different ways to get down to it.
Nareya and Jasper fell in much to their surprise and Bosch spent a lot of time with them sitting in the sun on the picnic table.  Nareya ran to me later and said “Wendolyn, Wendolyn, the Sun will get you dry when you are wet!!!!   This was a great difference from when she feel in and cried with tears of being startled from going from fun to WET AND SLIPPEY!!
For me I would say that this day was a day of great confidence building.  Natalie was the leader as she found and then crossed a log that was from one side of the creek to the other.    None of the others went very far with trying it for a long time and then, one by one, after I gave Dahlia two sticks to use to walk across, they each made it over.  Great cheering went on for each and every one.  It was the biggest delight to see fears turn in to radiant smiles of self confidence.
The dye material was finally ready and all but Dahlia and Nareya came over.  They were busy “stealing” the apple chips that we had for snack.   They came later but someone had already put their eggs in.  They didn’t seem to mind when they pulled out their eggs and began to eat them though.
The others had fun putting their eggs in and they were fine with the bland color that came out with them all but me. I knew what they had looked like  last week and I,with some frustration and sadness spoken to Bosch :(, kept wondering why this didn’t work this week and it was so amazing last week!
Again, the children were delighted with the whole day so all was well. They really wanted to eat some of them and yet it was time to scurry off. So some of the eggs went into the backpacks and well, I think they never looked quite the same after that!!
On the ride back and actually there as well, Bosch was being very silly in a way that just gets them laughing so.  He did weird things with his hair and made funny hats with their stuffed animals and  “blankets.”