November 16
Fire days are the best! With hot chocolate, donuts, and roasted apples on the menu, and snowmen, perfect weather, fire building and lots of play, we filled the day and it went too fast!
We are going to surely miss your sweet faces, big laughs and hearing all the excitement at everything new!
Previous Weeks
After learning about bugs in the winter time, we introduced our forest friends to these wildlings, that they took to instantly! We made cosy corners for them and then set up and had a tea party! (with fresh berry juice) We decided to take them on a walk around the river, then come back for snacks, books and playtime!
What a perfect day in the rain! We decided to just embrace it, not put up a tarp, and get right to playing! We worked together to get up our canvas and get paints out, then went to work creating our masterpiece. We hammered nails and made up a “how high can you jump” game. We went on an exploring walk and found made shelters, deer dens and made snowmen!
We travelled back and nestled all our bodies in our own little man made shelter from a few weeks ago and read books about a wind travelling leaf man and life under the snow. Then finished the day playing tree hugger, getting muddy and splashing in the puddles…. And finding a single small fish in a puddle too!!🤔🤔
Resilience in the cold was the name of the day! It can be hard to go from t-shirts and a creek day last week to snow and COLD the next. In the snow and nonstop snowing we started the fire together for roasting hotdogs, marshmallows and warming up with hot chocolate. We played in the spooky mud kitchen and slack line, gutted and painted pumpkins, and worked our bodies hard climbing the steep slippery hill to sled! We ended the day listening to a friendly witch story around the fire and laughing hard while playing!
The sun gifted us today with one last hot day of the year (maybe) and we took advantage! We headed to the river to hang out with the frogs that have not started hibernating yet and the many minnows. We made lots of mud muffins and experimented with the current.
Collecting golden rod gulls, we made necklaces out of them and talked about how some indigenous have used them for many years as jewelry beads.
We finished the day relaxing in the hammock, reading stories and talking about how great it was that all these wildlings were so awesome at not letting the cold river water stop their play!
What a gentle day to become resilient in the rain. We set the tarp up right when we got to camp and settled in with stories and the sound of rain. We got some magnifiers on and went on a forging walk to learn about wild edible plants. Foraging silverberries, rose hips, liquorice, golden rod and much much more. We then circled back to camp to add them to our teapot to make Wild tea!
These wildlings then wanted to track animal tracks so we set off to find lots of scat, tracks and animal beds!
We ended the day warming up with our foraged tea, playing in our mud kitchen and telling more stories listening to the pitter patter of the rain.
Games of camouflage and finding bird nests, what the perfect start to our day!
Along our exploring walk, we found snakes, handfuls of mushrooms growing under the soil, even a frog!
Telling a story about a world in the deep forest full of fairies we set off to turn our own world into a world of fairies, heroes, and monsters, making fairy homes and using cat tails as wands and swords!
With the wind as our constant welcomed friend today, we settled in with our hammocks, art supplies and tools. These wildlings worked so hard to construct and paint a new shelter! They took to fixing up the deck with many nails and drill holes. We made the world’s largest liquorice seed ball learning how many people that invent things get their inspiration from spending time in nature with wonder in their mind.
We ended the day reading Blackfoot Legends of different animals (ie. how the bear got a short tail)
There seemed to not be enough time in the day to fit in all the important play we were having!
We set off to collect apples and forage for fire starting materials. We worked hard with our ferro rods to start our fires and start our group fire. These wildlings cut SO many apples for our wild apple cider. Feeding the fire and checking the apple cider along the way we played on our favourite Forest School hill and relaxed on the hammocks We gathered around to sip our apple cider and had snacks while listening to storybooks. Ending the day roasting marshmallows and making mint Oreo s’mores, playing knights and superheroes in our capes and nature crowns.
You’re little wildlings did amazing today!
We became nature explorers as we travelled through the woods, checking out all our different spaces for future play and adventures! We checked out every animal hole and every gully. Letting our feet guide our travels we searched for frogs, played games, picked wild crab apples and became a little more wild!
Travelling down to our river site to end the day we played with the much loved mud kitchen, climbed clay walls, made cupcakes and soups!
Can’t wait for all of our future adventures!
Side note: 😊 If you haven’t yet, could you put a hand towel in your child’s backpack along with 2-3 empty bread bags. We end up using these things quite a bit. water just calls to every Child’s heart!
