Final Goodbyes

We can’t believe that Spring season of Forest Dreamers has officially come to an end! We have had so much fun watching all of our Forest Dreamers grow, connect with the world around them, and have a blast doing it!

To end the year, we tied the things we learned about this season in with learning about Native American culture.

We shared what we already knew about Native Americans and had a discussion about how they live off the land. We realized that since they relied on the land for food and life, if there was a drought they would have to move and follow the water. We also talked about how different their lives were, and how they couldn’t just go to the grocery store like us to get food and water.

Since they lived off the land, we talked about how they had to hunt/fish for a lot of their food. We played a few games that many Native American children would play, which helped them learn skills for hunting when they grew older. We threw corn cob darts through holes in the wigwam to work on our aim and then we practiced throwing the darts and a wooden bat at stuffed animals. We noticed that the bigger fox stuffed animal was much easier to hit than the smaller rabbit stuffed animal.

We also read stories about how things came to be told by different Native American tribes in a book called Native American Stories by Joseph Bruchac. We read a story about how the bullfrog came to be, how mountains in Oregon and Washington appeared, why the opossum has no hair on its tail (which we observed the other week), why Turkey Vultures have no feathers on top of their heads, and more. On Wednesday, we used story stones to create our very own story.

Here is the story we wrote: First a girl met a nice snake. Then there was a fish. And then there was a donkey. The donkey got rained on by a cloud. And the donkey asked the fish if he could go to his house and the fish said “yes.” And the girl and the donkey and the snake went to the fish’s house. The End.

Thank you all so much for an amazing Spring! Hope you all have a great summer full of outdoor adventures and visits to Irvine! We hope Irvine will always be a second home to all of the Forest Dreamers and their families.

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