Tender Tracks Friday Day 13

December 14, 2018
Waxing Moon
Lake Lagunitas

With rain in the forecast, we were all suited up and prepared for a wet day and puddle play. When Juniper Rose arrived at Lake Lagunitas, the wind was whipping leaves off the trees and Margot exclaimed, “it’s really picking up!” The children were undeterred by the winds and leaves swirling and headed over to the Raccoon Home tree to begin preparing their house for the coming storm. They all worked together to add sticks and logs to reinforce the space.

A banana slug came out to see what was going on and we stopped to spend some time with it, some children even crawled on the ground beside it. Soon there were raindrops falling and we found some coverage under the picnic structure for snack time. We invited the fire fairies in their lantern home to light up a story from Trippy Troopy and Trilly Truly who shared an adventure all about their own first encounter with a gnomes and lanterns! Inspired by our story, the children were outfitted with hammers and nails to tap-tap-tap like the gnomes and make holes in our lanterns to let the light shine through. We all persevered with our hammering through the cans frozen full of ice, and then hammered at the ice that broke free.

The children returned to their Raccoon Family play, running up the slope to the tree home and back down again across the small creek while Ruby and I spent some time making handles for the children’s lanterns. Violent, Siena, Margot and Charlie found some fantastic shelf mushrooms growing from the side of a tree and spend some time exploring with them. Some were as big as the children’s hands and some were even bigger! They were white and had frilly ribs underneath them and were smooth on top. They grew up on the tree even taller than the children, but not taller than Ruby or I.

Grandfather Sun came out for a time and warmed up the grassy meadow near the climbing Redwood tree. A group of children ran up the spillway steps with Ruby to see if the next storm was coming quickly. They were all weather watchers to see if we could have lunch in the sunshine and returned triumphantly to announce that we could, indeed, have a sunshine lunch. We had a special birthday celebration for Siena during lunch and heard a unique story all about her life. She brought some sweet treats to share, which we all enjoyed in addition to our own lunches.

Almost as soon as we finished lunch, the clouds came in darker and the winds swept up. As the first raindrops began to fall, our play returned to the Raccoon Family Tree and the picnic structure. Many children also turned into puppies and kitties that were very cute and nice to pet! There was also plenty of running around and some rolling in the dirt and stick play with friends. As we headed towards Juniper Rose, the raindrops got bigger and came faster and soon we were cozy, warm and dry and ending our day with gratitude for rain play, banana slugs, and birthday fun!