November 17
Fire days are the best! With hot chocolate, donuts, and roasted apples on the menu, along with perfect weather, tools, 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 listening in on all your ‘baddies’ games!
Previous Weeks
Travelling to this groups favourite location in the woods we spent the day turning it into a enchanted forest filled with forest friends, hero’s and “badies”, and a woodland tea parties (fresh berry juice sweetened with hunny).
We ended the day reading books and discussing what fire foods they wanted to cook around the fire next week!
With the fire ban finally lifted, we set our sights to starting fires! We learned to make a birds nest and went foraging for nature that easily ignites and made our own nests. Using ferro rods to start fires I think every wildling was able to start a fire of their own today…. If not multiple!
We spent the day making many fires, roasting fire foods, and playing non stop!
Resilience in the cold was the name of the day! It can be hard to go from t-shirts last week to snow and cold the next. One wildling even sat down at the beginning of circle time exclaiming “I’m just not ready for this weather!”
However with the snow all around we talked about how in winter dry=warm, and set off to play in the spooky mud kitchen, gutting and painting pumpkins, working our bodies hard to build a snow tunnel and tobogganing over and over down our very tiny hill and then man made slope!
We ended the day drinking hot chocolate, playing tree hugger, telling a group building story, then listening to a friendly witch story!
I think we all left feeling more ready to face winter head on.
We collected golden rod gulls along our walk today, to turn them into necklaces! We talked about how they have been used by indigenous people for many years as beads for jewelry.
We settled into play with shelter building, camouflage nets and our mud kitchen!
We ended the day checking in on the porqupine that spent the day sleeping up in the tree.
After a walk, foraging learning about different edible plants, we came back to home-base to make our foraged goods into wild tea. We then spent the rest of our time, relaxing in the hammock, playing in the forts and playing games!
Erecting shops, eating choke cherries, observing the moon (that was right above us the whole day) talking about how it has a different rotation than the sun, noticing how choke cherries produce sap; It was a great way to start the day!
We then turned the forest into a world of fairies, heroes, and of course monsters! We went over to the mines in search of a cactus to taste to end the day.
On our way to the mine we stopped for a snack and found a new favourite spot!
Shops and grocery stores were quickly erected. Feather hunts (we found the coulee jackpot!), seed collecting, and eating chokecherries became these wildlings main joy.
They worked so hard together to try to figure out how to reach berries up high for their shop trying MANY different techniques through problem solving!
All the kids excitingly screamed about how we must return to that exact location next week!
We ended the day reading different indigenous stories and falling in love with the chickadees and woodpeckers.
We didn’t get far today before the heavy rain came down on us so we set up camp, read books, built a shelter, cut up apples and made apple cider under the tarp with the rain trickling down. With the apple cider cooking away, we dove headfirst into transforming the forest into our own personal airport, flying to destinations all over the world!
You’re little wildlings did amazing today!
We became nature explorers as we travelled through the woods. Letting our feet and curiosity guide our travels, we went all the way to the train bridge to observe the beaver lodge and see if the mama and baby were out playing. We checked out everything of interest along the way from animal holes, bones, feathers, rocks, interesting plants and snacking on chokecherries!
We ended the day relaxing in hammocks and playing with the much loved mud kitchen, making soups, cupcakes and pies!
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!
