Field & Forest - Take Two!

This week we had two new classmates join our class so we will have to work on fitting these friends into our play as well.  This will be their first time in the forest and I’m sure this will be very exciting for them as well.  Today is going to be a bit of a different day.  The grown ups have decided that taking school pictures here in the forest would be a great idea, we are not that interested and the whole concept is a bit confusing for us.  Like who ever thought getting 14 four years olds together on a rock pile, and getting them all to stop and look at the same thing was really going to happen!  We got close but not sure what the outcome will look like.  The photographers name was JJ.  She was very nice and very patient.  Here is a picture of her and the rock pile they were trying to get us organized on….Yikes!

 

Oh yes and there is the whole idea that we are supposed to keep our eyes open even in the bright light, and show our teeth while we smile, yes and could we please put both of our feet facing forward, and make sure the wind doesn’t blow your hair into your face, and by the way JJ did you want to see the treasure I found in the woods, it almost matches the colour of your jacket and then if you thought you had seen it all, just take a look at this cool necktie!!  Boy that was sure an experience.  But in the end we all did just fine.

Mr. Blatz hung out at the rocks a lot and this is were we do lots of stick play and lots of climbing.  Our play got more involved this time because we had been here once before so we could kind of figure out what we wanted to play more easily.  We had one bloody nose from a jump that was taken too soon, before the other person had cleared the landing path, OK, lesson learned, no crying this time, a little first aid, and away we go.  It really feels like we are falling from the sky.

 

One of us enjoys peeling the bark off of a dead branch.  “Hey what’s this, this white stuff under the bark, do you know what it is?”  No one seemed to know but it sure was interesting.

There was a lot of treasure hunting this week.  If you look carefully you can find some really interesting stuff.  “Hey Mr. Blatz, look what we found.”  What is it questions Mr. Blatz.  “Oh, this is a fossil.”  Mr. Blatz continues to ask questions like what kind of a fossil we think it is.  “It’s from a T. Rex”  “Yes chimes in the friend.  I know where fossils come from.  When a T. Rex dies it turns into a fossil”.

This theme seems to be sticking in our mind and it not long afterward when we find a rock that has red on it.  The theory is that this is from the blood of an animal likely when the T. Rex died.  Mr. Blatz is not so sure…he finds another rock that is red (he says its made of granite)and it doesn’t look that much like blood to us…who knows.

While we were playing Mr. Bordush notices a stick shelter way over there in the grass.  We hiked over there to take a look.  Someone had put a lot of work into building this so with our teachers encouragement we played and were careful to not knock it down or destroy it.

There are still lady bugs hanging around.  We especially notice them in the area where we eat our snacks.  We really enjoy watching them and having them crawl on us.  They have wings you know, and sometimes they even fly.  Mr. Blatz got one of them in a picture just when their wings were spreading apart to take flight.

Mrs. Crockett also took out a drum during snack time and began to bang out a nice steady rhythm with it.  Then she began to sing this sweet, sweet song about “our roots growing deep”.  She put each leader on the spot to come up with a phrase about an animal like “the deer run through the meadow’ or the geese fly high in the sky”.  Each phrase become the next verse of the song and each verse is followed by the words “and our roots grow deep”.  She is asking us to think about some animal and what it does so we can add it to the song next week.  We may need some help from our parents….OK?

We end our time together by gathering in a circle.  Mrs. Crockett asks each one of us what our favourite part of our time in the forest was.  Even the leaders get asked.  We all have different favourite parts, like the treasure hunting, playing with the ashes, jumping off the rocks, playing in the Tee Pee we found and lots of other things.  No one said that posing for a picture was their favourite part, are you surprized?

See you all next week.