Tender Tracks Palo Alto Tues. Nov. 13, 2012

New Moon
Day 21
Foothill Park-The Big Meadow as you drive in

Paul was sick today.
The day was sweet, bright, sunny, peaceful, playful, sometimes high tones of excitment/conflicts with each other and mostly playful and fun.   Todays story was “Fredrick ” by Leo Lionni. It is a perfect Thanksgiving tale and I tell it every year at this time.
Please do go to the library to read it. It is a classic and lovely.  The children acted out the characters in it throughout the day yet the Bear Family game was still most prominent.   Emme did not want to come to circle and wandered about. Half the time she was with Jill as she shared with her the many wonders of her world.  After that she was ready to join the group.
The rest were happy to sing our new songs, and even a newer one today: Little Jackie Frost.  The days really are colder in the morning and there has been some very cold times as my Fathers zuccini’s can attest to!
We didn’t play too much after circle but did lounge around with ease.  I brought some walnuts for the children to crack and to get a feel for what it must be like for a Squirrel to crack a walnut.  How DO they do it anyway???
When we got to Foothill Park  I said they could either go to the bathroom or feel free to run all the way to the Tree that we always set up camp at.  They all chose to stay together and go to the bathroom first!  Very sweet and expressive of the kind of group they are.
They all know about two times for lunch now and as I set out the sheet for lunch someone said to another” are you going to eat now or later?”   Half ate and then everyone came together within about 5 min.
I had forgotten what we needed to make our gifts for the birds today,pine cone’s covered in bird seed  so Jill, Giselle and Emme went to the bus to go and get the basket with everything we needed while the rest wanted to hear the Bear Boy story again from two weeks ago.  So my group went into the sun in the middle of the lawn to hear this story while the other group not only went to the bus to get everything but had a grand time at the lake “feeding” all the creatures in the water with leaves, twigs and the like, so Jill shared with me.
After the Bear Boy story we all went on a journey to find cones when we came upon a great big and beautiful Woodrat’s nest.   We explored and examined it for awhile and then carried on to get our pine cones.  This led us across the lawn to another area of Pine trees and there we found great cones!
I got all that we needed and so began the making of our gifts to the birds.  All were delighted to make them accept Evan and Kaden that opted out of this because?  I dont really know but they were clear on not wanting to do this.  During this time they were REALLY into, with the rest of the group tackling Jill and playing such games.  She brought them into a great stalking game where they had to be really quiet to sneak up on her and touch her softly.  Well this only lasted so long for Evan who just LOVED jumping on her and running up quickly and then most of the others followed.  I then played with them a bit and it turned into the same so, it then morphed into me being dead and they were covering me with grass.   For quite a while after that there were many many variations on this game with stalking, hiding, burying with grass, dying, being born again and the most fun or funniest was when they became “Mud People” and stood right in front of me. Of course I could not see them!  Then Jill brought the rain and the mud people  to the ground but then they rose again and again and again and………..
Much play and fun and noticing so many things.  Alice and Evan found a pile of small feathers when we were first on the lawn and we all checked this out and had great ideas of what we wanted to do with this.
Miu and Giselle still don’t like to get dirty but by the end of the day well, it just kind of happened.  All the children accept Kaden and Giselle took off their shirts and shoes to run and play in the heat of the day and they are getting fairly skilled at making sure when they take off their clothes to put them with their backpacks.  Ok, a little reminder  but, they do it with out a hitch.  Yeah!  This makes finding things so much easier!
On the way back Jill played different bird calls of bird’s that they know  or think they know or are new, from my bird call book.  Ask me about it, I will be happy to show it to you.