… and our first really rainy day!
Our first October week felt like a settling-in to Autumn, with chillier days and a rainbow of foliage spreading across the forest canopy. Children came bundled more warmly, donning caps and mittens, and carrying thermoses of warm lunch, a welcome aid during these colder months.
The Elderberries spent the first part of the week working on their fire building skills, in anticipation of the cold season ahead. On Monday, we continued practice with the bow drill method, and made some warming forest tea from pine needles, wintergreen, and sassafras. On Tuesday, children undertook a fire-making challenge, each building their own little fire out of different materials, utilizing various methods of tending.
On Monday, we took a hike up to Fiske Pond for lunch and sit spots, and noticed that the beavers have been hard at work, improving their lodge at the northeast corner of the pond. Children are working on orienting themselves to the four cardinal directions, and have been finding their own sit spots depending on the direction assigned to them. We turned on all our senses during sit spots, and the consensus among the group seemed to be that the wind was in charge that day: we could feel, see, and hear it.
The Elderberries also spent time with two stories about peacemaking last week. With all the battle play that’s been bubbling up between some of the children, Crispin and I decided to address this energy first through storytelling. On Monday Crispin told The Story of the Peacemaker, a tale about the formation of Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and on Tuesday I told the tale of Loo-Wit, the Fire Keeper, a Nisqually myth about the volcano we know as Mt. Saint Helen’s (placed between Mt. Adams and Mt. Hood in order to keep the peace between two warring tribes). On Tuesday, children were introduced to a new game, Deer Wrestling, which demands respect for your opponent and controlled bodily awareness.
The Elderberries will begin to practice knife skills after we return from our October break: expect to hear from your child about their knife safety contract (we may assign it as “homework”!).
Over on Blueberry Island, the early childhood group learned a story about butterflies and about appreciating the differences between friends. Clara took the opportunity to weave in some beautifully age-appropriate curriculum on butterfly life cycles and migration. Here’s an update from Clara, including a recap of our first really rainy day -our first soup day:
Building on our tale of the 3 Butterfly Sisters in our 3 day sequence, we told the story of butterflies of different colors seeking shelter in the rain, first on Monday, with puppets on Tuesday, along with some visuals and conversation around monarch migrations. We learned a hand sign for butterfly and several yoga poses, as well as a song, “Fly like a Butterfly.”
A flight passage game to Mexico was piloted by Galiya! Children loved sitting on an elevated plank as they flew all the way to Mexico, and Clara (flight attendant) fetched their mittens (wings?) from colder Massachusetts, which they had removed for our first tea party on the large new table.
On Wednesday, we explored new terrain at the top of the hill, Crispin building our first fire up top, in the rain, with a courageous group of butterflies who weathered the storm under several mushrooms!
Melissa shared the story of Stone Soup while the group munched happily on mini pumpkin muffins, delivered by a mouse! “Take what you’ve got, put it in the pot, we’re making stone soup!” The story inspired a spirit of sharing and togetherness: with each child’s contribution of a root vegetable – and that magic ingredient, sharing – we created a beautiful, bountiful soup.
We chopped, sliced and diced root veggies in the large lodge, and had a tea party in the cabin from wild gathered edibles of white pine, hemlock needles, wintergreen and partridgeberry (fondly known as the two nostrils or eyed pig nosed berry or groundberry here!).
Everyone then gathered around the fire to watch as Crispin poured the broth and veggies we had prepared into a large wooden vessel which he (along with some beavers!?) had carved out of a cherry log.
We watched as the hot stones, brought from the Atlantic Ocean and heated in our raging fire, were added carefully with hand carved wooden tongs to the trough, where they cooked the vegetables and enriched our soup with many flavors and minerals!
While the soup cooked, we played played the butterfly migration game and scattered milkweed seed amongst the trees and laurels.
At lunchtime, we sat gathered together at the picnic table over hot soup, graced by the song:
“We thank you for this food this food, this glorious glorious food.
And the animals,
and the vegetables,
and the minerals,
that make it possible!”
We chatted about how the stones are also a source of minerals for butterflies, and how when we see the winged wonders resting in puddles or on rocks they are often actually sipping minerals from them as a food source!
It was a lovely way to bring some of the lessons full circle.
Perhaps next year we’ll see some milkweed sprouting from seeds spread by the fingers of these little natural explorers as they sifted through the silk, and spread further by the wind, and steps and scampers of red and grey squirrels!
That’s not a red potato in Izzy’s bowl… the children were very curious about the delicious stones! They licked the warm rocks, pretending to be butterflies. The soup was delicious; the perfect ending to our first chilly, rainy day together.
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