Tender Tracks Tues. Day 13

October 24, 2017
Waxing Moon
Lake Lagunitas

Devin was homesick and Sandy Long was substituting for Ruby.
The children came in beautiful, beautiful spirits and kept that up for the entire day.

Sandy flowed with the group and they welcomed her in so very kindly.
The focus today was still with color, making our dye vats of all the Redwood Cones that we have gathered and Pomegranate skins.

When we got to our usual spot they took Sandy to where our circle time is, showed her where the Backpack tree is and then off to play.  We had games before circle and found wonders all around. We then came to circle and sang our songs so Sandy could catch on. She knew some of them.

The children used the apple peeler again for their apples only this time the apples were so big that they shared one apple per two children.  Austen stated, happily, that this was a “sharing snack.” And so it was. We also had some pomegranates because we are going to use the skins to make a dye bath.
The story was another story about How colors came to Be, only this story was from the funny magical people that brought color to a gray world.

Circle time and lunchtime all continue to be very social, gentle, inclusive, peaceful, funny and warm.
After our morning circle they instantly went to their tree. Vita was a baby bird a lot of the day and at one point Austen was the Daddy bird and Vita was the baby that he was feeding.   Puma continues to love to play chase and Avaline too so today there was A LOT of chasing, being frozen, being Coyotes, Rabbits, birds, stalking up on each other, finding base and the like.

I got out our Soap Root from last Thursday and they all went down to the creek where some clear water was flowing to put water in a bucket.  Puma and Austen hauled the bucket over and then Avaline and Austen worked at cleaning the fibers from the Soap Root plants.  Then all of them went down to the creek where I cut up one of the soap roots and they commenced to have a GRAND time washing their hands and finding the soap emerge as they scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed.

They then came up for lunch, got their hands very dirty again and then they washed their hands for lunch, again, at the water spigot. 🙂

After lunch they really wanted to play again.  There was play then off to an adventure down the creek. Austen led us to a Grand Fairy house. There we found great black charcoal from the burnt Redwood Fairy house he led us to. Austen LOVED painting his hands completely black.  Puma and Avaline did not want to get dirty so Austen had to curtail his enthusiasm of putting it on them. And, he did.  We all then manuvered ourselves over the creek. All of a sudden Austen popped his head out of a little hole in a tree near us. How did he do that?????? Avaline tried it then and Puma was concerned about Spiders being in there so he did not.  All the while Vita was playing with Sandy in some trees up closer to our circle place.

I then remembered that we had to fill the pots with water and put our Redwood cones and Pomegranates into them to soak!!!!

Rushing off we went to do so.  They all worked together to fill the buckets and put everything in there. Then they got all their belongings, brought them to the bus and, oh dear, we lost them AGAIN. Where could they be??? UNDER THE SEATS IN THE BUS!! Oh how they love to play this game!
When they came out we drew our picture of the day remembering all the beings and plants we saw and played with today. The many Ravens cawing above us. The Woodpeckers, and butterflies, the mud and the water and the seeds that we soaked.  Puma discovered a Maple Tree’s seeds in their wonderful swirly wings. Then we sang our goodbye song.

But oh yes, the day began with a little fun meditation on The Jewel in your Heart. They received some small beeswax to play with in their hands too.  This was on the bus before we even left.