Forest Friends Are Back Again!

After quite a mild hibernation, the Forest Dreamers are back again to see the happy things that Spring will bring!

The week started off with welcoming back our old friends and meeting new ones! Our class word for ‘friend’ comes from the Native American Sioux’s word for ‘friend’- ‘takota’. We are so happy to add our new takotas to our forest tribe!

As we gathered around a pretend fire for our first class, Ms. Sophie and Ms. Hayley had a special bag that was chock full of all sorts of seemingly random things- A stick? A shell? A glove? Little did everyone know, that each item in the bag had a story about its use. Holding a shell up to our ear to listen sparked a conversation about listening, A purple glove helped us remember about dressing for the weather, and a stick can have lots of jobs (magic wands, spears, dirt diggers) but should be used carefully around groups of friends. Each takota picked a different mystery item from the bag to talk about.

Tuesday should have been named Mud ball Day, as almost everyone that showed up clean to class, turned into a mud ball by the end! We took shelter in the Education Hut and got a chance to meet our special new shed inside!  This shed will be used by our group to store fun art projects, special collections on the trails and supplies for stream searching! Thanks, Mr. Wally!

Thursday, we started the beautifully breezy day by water painting rocks in the Outdoor Classroom, we met in front of the fire pit and sang about all of our special takotas in class. Our travels took us to the point overlooking the meadow for some soaking up of sunshine. Here, we listened to music, built neat sculptures and made a suet snack for our animal takotas! We read a story called Everybody Needs a Rock by Byrd Baylor and on the way back to our meeting area, we found our own special rock that was uniquely ours. We followed the ‘rules’ in the book to find the perfect one. Here are some examples of rock rules:

Rule # 4 Don’t choose a rock that’s too big. A rock as big as an apple is too big, a rock as big as a horse is MUCH too big! You want it to fit in your hand, right?

Rule# 5 If it’s too small, a mouse might eat it.

Rule #9 Always sniff it because rocks have their own smells.

It was pretty funny to see everyone sniffing their rocks as they found them! We got some very interesting descriptions of rock smells as we traveled back up the paved access road!

We ended our week playing ‘wind tag’ which the kids decided should be evolved into ‘seed tag’ because everyone who was not ‘it‘ were seeds blowing in the wind! We said our goodbyes and everyone went home tired and happy!

You ‘Rock’, Forest Buddies!