Palo Alto Tender Tracks Wednesday Dec. 4, 2013 Day 13

Waxing Crescent Moon
Foothill Park

Jasper was not with us today.
Jackie Frost was covering so many places today yet Grandpa Sun shone warm and bright. Where ever he went Jackie Frost had to flee so, we followed the Sun often and kept warm and comfortable.  But, where ever the cold was ice crystals and Fairy like images were all around.
In the bus we settled in and on the ride to Foothill Park Bosch was his usual fun and peaceful self which the children would be brought into peels of laughter.
I had two main intentions, to see if we could find our apple/bird seed Bird gifts that we made right before holiday and to stay warm. I thought it was to be FREEEZING on this day!!! so I wanted to make sure that they moved alot.  We found a warm spot to park the bus and sit in the sun for circle.  However, this did not happen, which is most often just PERFECT!! and following the “will of the day.”   With that said, as I was getting things out of the bus and helping Eric go pee, Bosch and serveral of the children ran up the hill right in front of us where many Deer paths were covering the hillside.
Eric, when ready, ran up there.  They all were going up higher and higher and higher.
Hailey, Anissa and Emme were with me down at the bus.  Emme and Hailey finally decided to go up but Anissa wanted to stay down below.  She sat on a rock and watched us go up.  But everyone was going up and up and up and up and it was becoming to far away so, I came back down, and she and I walked back up this very big hill together. At a hard part I gave her my scarf, she held on to that and I pulled her, just a bit to help, up the hill.
When we were up there they were all ready for snack so I brought that up.  There we sat in the warm sun looking down on the huge meadow.  We sang our new songs and then sat quietly as the deer that we saw earlier began to meander into our sight.  How beautiful!
A game of find the mittens, that the children were wearing, came about.  I would hide the mittens and some of the children, Emme, Erick, Aurora, Natalie and Hailey, went searching for them.  I then created a game where I put something in one of my hands, put them behind my back, sang a little song, and then they had to guess what hand I had the object in.  Anissa really liked this game.
Dahlia and Nareya discovered that slipping down the hill was really fun so they did that. Later Eric, Natalie and Emme followed them and then they all climbed back up the big hill.
As we began to eat our lunch in the beautiful Sun a Ranger came a long and said that we could not be up there so we needed to pack up and create a new adventure for ourselves.
Down we went and at the bottom we discovered that the Oak tree’s acorn caps were pink inside!!! When Bosch showed this to me I thought that he had tricked me and just colored them with something. But, HE DID NOT!!!  All the acorn caps were colored with a beautiful pink hue inside each and every one of them.
Dahlia and Nareya thought that they had to poop so I brought out my shovel.  Emme REALLY wanted to help dig the hole. Dahlia let her.   We dug holes, they squatted but alas, no poop came.
The children wound up going further down the road under another great Oak tree and eventually we made it to the Redwood Grove where had made our apple nest gifts to give to the birds before holiday.  But oh yes, on our way there, we were all, accept Bosch, Eric and Natalie, tracking Bosch’s foot prints in the icy grass.   We then made our own tracks.  When we got there, oh no, where was Natalie????  Well, there was something quite interesting next to Bosch. At first I just heard sounds but then, could it be? Could it BEEEE???? YES! it was Natalie!!!
From there some of us really looked for the nests and what did we find?  STRING!  and no apples with bird seed in them.  The string Eric found was very intersting too because the apple was gone and the string was wrapped up and around the branch. We had many guesses of what might have happened. One guess: “Was it a squirrel that pulled the apple up and ate it on top of the branch and that was why the string was wrapped up wards?”  What do YOU think?
After this there was a lot of exploring with the frozen plants, the big rocks that were fun to climb on and, one of my favorite parts of the day was, making tracking pictures in the dirt with our fingers and sticks.   Eric drew pictures of the Deer trails,  Bosch and I drew Deer, Cat and Bird tracks.  I began to make up a story showing pictures of the deer trails and where the deer was going to the pond and then leaving and going to it’s Deer Lay and on and on ( showing them how come there are so many Deer trails traversing the Mountain sides.)  All were there accept Nareya and Dahlia who were playing on the rocks across the way from us. Bosch left after a bit and went over with them.
But then, we had to make our way back to the bus so off we went. On the way out there were many more deer to view and wave good by to.