Tender Tracks Friday Day 24

March 22, 2019
Waning Moon
Lake Lagunitas

We were welcomed by another wet and rainy morning at Lake Lagunitas, but Tender Trackers are professional rain-rompers and were unfazed by the damp day. We started by meeting the butter churn that would help make our morning snack. Ruby reminded us of the story from last week about Sean O’Hoolihan and Mrs. O’Malley and making ‘gold’ in the butter churn. All of the children got many a turn at the churn, chanting like Sean in the story; “Chuggity clump! Chuggity clump! I’m making gold – a great big lump!!” It took all morning of taking turns among me, Ruby and all of the children, and by snack time we had a delicious lump of golden butter to spread on fresh bread. It was truly a treat and there was much appreciation for the hard work, time and effort spent on making it.

Miles and I made an obstacle course from some found objects and added some sticks, logs and rocks. We invited our Tender Tracks friends to try it out, and everyone had their own style of hopping, walking and balancing through the course.

Charlie and I found a banana slug and a newt and then made a small forest home for a creature. She spent a lot of time on the details of arranging sticks for a mattress, small stones for seats, and finding moss for food. Any small creature would be cozy in the home she built. Rohan, Blake and Miles used sticks to test the depth of the creek and searched for newts. Blake found a long, curved stick for ‘catching’ and herded his friends with it in a new game while Violet, Siena and Margot played princesses in the forest.

We headed up the spillway steps to explore and see if there were any turtles. No turtles today, but we did have lunch at the table overlooking the lake. It got cold and rainy during lunch so we decided to go play some running games down in the coverage of the trees.

We played ‘fire in the forest’ again and chose our animals and took turns asking questions and running from Ruby and other friends. Then some children started a game of ‘duck, duck, goose’ while Violet suggested ‘hide and seek’ so Violet, Rohan, Miles and I started to play and soon the ‘duck, duck, goose’ crew came to join in! Violet began by counting and Ruby, the children, and I all hid. When Violet found me first I burst out and began to run away, but she corrected me that when she finds someone, they then help find the others. So that’s what we did. It was the sweetest game of hide and seek I’ve ever played.

We played a few more rounds and in the last round, none of us could find Ruby! Charlie had the idea that we should hide from her, and if we had more time, I think we all would have hidden in the forest (I am curious how long they’d all hide from each other!) But we didn’t have to worry about losing Ruby because Miles and Blake found her!

Back on Juniper Rose, snuggled under blankets, we shared all we loved from the day, including newts, a banana slug, good friends, rain and, of course, a lump of gold to eat! We hope you all enjoyed the fresh butter we sent home with your Tender Tracker!