Tender Tracks Thurs. Day 38

Feb. 7, 2019
Lake Lagunitas
Waxing Moon

Ruby and Ellie were home sick today 🙁   We sent them love and well wishes.

This was a grand day for the children as well as myself. Thank you all for supporting them in showing up with their best selves/working together selves, as, that is exactly what they did!  Truly, the day was smooth and easy. I was reminded of how I worked for the first ten years of Tender Tracks, me and 6 children.  It is best, for many reasons, to have two, yet there is such a beauty with one adult. One of the main reasons is that we all HAVE to stay together!  If someone wants to go further away than my eye or range we must bring the whole group together to either accommodate that or, not.  There just HAS to be a lot more working together and, that is what happened.  They all stayed in one area.  The boys delighted in their magic Redwood home world and the girls up above nearer to me or playing with the boys in and out of their world.

When we got there they all instantly DID work and play together. Oh of course, they had their usual own little games yet the over all picture was, playing together, in and out.  The boys had more emotional struggles today.  Theo and Holden were closer than the usual Holden and Eamon. Today, Eamon’s feelings got more hurt.  Theo got to learn more about asking for what he wants, like a stick, and WAITING until it was his turn, hence some of the challenges. Holden, was figuring out what his true desires were in the midst of his two friends and wanting to be ok with their affection, or something like this.  Phew, being little and learning those weird things called feelings inside are challenging and, how to be social is just plain and simply the WORK OF THE YOUNG ONES!!   As always, they were valiant and beautiful as they ebbed and flowed and grew.  An example: Eamon came to me so very sad that Theo called him, some kind of a name. I came over and shared what Eamon shared with me to Theo and said, “Something happened for you to call him that.”  Holden chimed in and said, “He punched me in the stomach.” ( and, I must say, it did not sound so true. You know the body language and pulling back of the words when they aren’t really true?)  Eamon instantly said, with tears in his eyes, ” I did not.”  I just stayed with the fact that something happened that each one of them didn’t like and now we get to share what we do want without hurting our friends feelings.  Then, Theo said, with a very kind heart, “I’m sorry Eamon.” He then said that he threw Eamon’s stick down below. I said, with ease, he now needed to make right what he did wrong so go get it and give it back to Eamon. He did, and they were all content and back together.  And, another PHEW moment happened and then passed !

But, let me go back to the beginning of the day when we got on the bus.
Luna started with missing Dad and soooo looking forward to coming home and going bike riding with “My whole family!!!” Uma was happy, Josie met us up there, and Theo, Eamon and Holden were their usual goofy, happy selves.  I brought in the same game we did on Tuesday morning yet put less stuffed animals in the bag for them to feel and guess. We did the same process, each one closing their eyes and feeling to see if their hands could tell what animal they were feeling.  They were not able to do that yet they were able to go deeper into what they felt: soft, hard, rough, etc.

We then made our way to the lakes. From there they all helped bring what we needed up to our spot.
Story today played off of things that were happening on Tuesday. Therefore, I told, my nature version, of the Three Little Pigs.  And with that, later on the girls wound up making straw and twig houses.

The highlights of the day:  They all gathered together after circle and worked on smoothing down their brooms with a special bees wax cream.  They got the hard beeswax and warmed it up with their hands rubbing it all along the staff of their broom and then, off they went.

Before lunch we played a wonderful, preschools style, Red Rover, Red Rover. In this version they became different animals.  They had to run and touch my belly. If I touched their wrist then they joined me, if not, they ran back.  They ALL had SOO much fun running back and forth. Sometimes they wanted to be caught and sometimes not. The ones who were we would all huddle together and decide what animal to call forth.  They were enlivened.  We then came to lunch.

After lunch and the little challenge for the boys spoken of above, I brought out some very dry tinder. For the rest of the day they got to practice lighting a match and igniting the tinder.  Josie, Luna and Theo were the most hesitant and, each one of them found success. Can you imagine how happy they were??? Uma was delighted with her skill and apparent experience with this.  Eamon and Holden did just grand.  Holden was actually scared yet, when the match lit, he almost threw it and jumped back but, by the second try he composed him self very quickly, adjusted his fingers appropriately on the match, put it just right in the tinder bundle and POOF, fire came.  Luna and I did it together with great success and she was delighted for even attempting this.

The day flowed with them all playing together, in and out with laughter and grace.