Happy Halloween!

A happy fall day and Halloween celebration at Wrens' Nest! We had a fun and festive morning decorating our room and donning our costumes. 

A pumpkin (Lincoln) making a beehive, Wyatt and Rupert busy building a loading dock with our colorful blocks. 

We made pumpkins with Jack-o-lantern faces the week before to decorate our room with, they looked beautiful with the sun shining through. We loved singing our pumpkin song at circle.

"Cut into a pumpkin, scoop it with a spoon.

Then you carve a little mouth, shaped just like a moon.

Cut two eyes to twinkle, and a three cornered nose. 

Use for teeth ten tiny seeds, and set them in a row. 

Then you light a candle, and place it right inside. 

And put it in your window, for Halloween night!"

Now, time for the Pumpkin Olympics!!

I got the last four pumpkins from my neighbors patch and they just happened to be the biggest pumpkins ever! Thank goodness we had so many helpers to heave and ho them to the hill...

The finish line of the obstacle course....and their off!

Follow the winding path

Touch every pumpkin

Under the bench

Hop over each log

and cross the finish line!

Doing it backwards for an extra tricky challenge!

And now for the pumpkin race! But first we needed to roll these heavy and slippery racers up the hill. We broke off into four teams and worked together to get them to the top, which wasn't easy. 

Pre-race team interviews...

Ready, set, go! 

And so concludes the great Wren's Nest Pumpkin Olympics of 2016

After a very exciting morning we were all ready for a cozy afternoon. We played in the quiet comfort of breezy mountain, playing snails on the garden fence and working on the fort. 

A good lunch and the story of that Naughty Hobgoblin were the perfect way to spend our afternoon.

Before we said goodbye, we worked hard to make a leaf pile using just our bodies, no rakes. We had windshield wipers and delivery trucks using our arms and feet and finally made a huge (and also a little soggy) leaf pile. So very good for jumping... 

October 25th

Although we missed Samantha, who was away this Monday, we were so lucky to have JoAnne, a special friend of Lindsay's, come in her place. She taught for many years at the Lake Champlain Waldorf School and is a true nature spirit and outdoor educator. Without Samantha, I didn't capture quite as many pictures but there was just as much magic as usual!

It's the time of year when all the plants of the garden and meadow begin to die away and leave behind  perfectly packaged seeds to sleep through winter, warm in the lap of Mother Earth. We looked at many different kinds of seeds; seeds with parachutes, seeds with wings, teeny tiny poppy seeds, and nuts! We talked about the reasons for all the different types of packages of seeds. We thought they are meant to first help the seed travel, through the air or with the help of animals and people, but also to protect them from air and water until it's time for them to grow again. JoAnne brought in beautiful clay Native American seed pots to look at. They have a small hole for the seeds to go in but then they are buried underground through winter. For these native people, collecting and protecting their seeds was a deeply important task that would determine if they could grow their food for the next year.

It was a chilly day but the October sun was shining and quickly warmed us. The children were delighted to find that Jack Frost had come to the big open meadows and left crystal treasures for us to find. We had to work quickly though because the warm sun was chasing them all alway!

The wind inspired a game of windy forest where the children had to try and create enough wind to blow down a tree (JoAnne). It took a lot of strength and determination to get a tree down! When the tree fell it dropped many acorns that grew into trees and made a new forest! 

We shared some of our Halloween ideas and costumes and decided it would be nice to make a decoration for our Wrens' Nest Halloween celebration. We thought we could gather leaves, seed pods and pine cones because of their nice autumn colors. 

We needed to warm up our fingers and toes after a frosty hike home to our room. We filled our bellies and discovered that many of us were eating types of seeds in our lunch! After that we had some very cozy floor book and story time before JoAnne offered us the story of Little Dawn Boy.

We made our Halloween wreath with the treasures we collected from the meadow and many beautiful marigold flowers that JoAnne brought for us. It will live safely in my refrigerator until it greets us on our door next week :) 

October 17th

A beautiful Autumn day at Wrens Nest! The forest has been lit with a blaze of colors and what better way to enjoy it than to get out and explore the forest. We decided that today would be perfect for a big hike on the yellow trail, start to finish. Before we left though we had some important morning tasks...

Checking the weather! The air smelled sweet and the sky was full of big puffy clouds with lots of colors. 

Today, Julian was in charge of checking the wind for us. Not too windy...We all agreed that we would want raincoats and sturdy boots or sneakers for our hike. Not quite cold enough for hats and gloves yet, unless you want them of course!

Before crossing the road to the yellow trail we always practice looking both ways and listening for cars with our deer ears. Even though we often hear cars we make sure it doesn't sound like the car is coming towards us. Then we know its safe to cross all together. 

Before we head into the forest on the yellow trail we are sure to ask the kind and gentle forest first. We have to listen very very carefully but the answer is always a resounding "yes!"

We started at the steepest part of the yellow trail, by Footprint Farm which took a lot of strength and coordination especially with all of the slippery leaves we had to walk on.

Our first stop was at a shelter and downed log. We repaired some of the walls that had fallen down and thought about how to make it bigger. 

Julian was shaking raindrops from a small tree and it popped right out of the ground! We looked at the wood where the tree had broken and felt that the wood inside was soft and squishy "like a sponge." We decided that the soft wood and wet ground are probably why it broke so easily. We used the young tree for our shelter and realized that even though trees are tall we might be stronger than some of them. 

We walked as quietly as we could because we new we were passing a neighbors house. Sammy and Samantha told us all about the porcupine who lives along the yellow trail. He has a house in the rocks that is surrounded by scat, a new word for poop, and porcupine quills. Last year he watched all the children look at his house from up high in a tree! 

We checked out out his house (the dark hole in the rocks) which was still surrounded by scat and quills. Some of the children noticed that the scat was very dry so we wondered if he still lived there or if he made a new house. 

We looked in every tree for porcupine, but he was nowhere in sight! 

Some of the children turned into coyotes, climbing to the top of the mossy rocks and howling to the rest of their pack. 

We found something! Layla almost stepped right on top of this garter snake! We knew it was a garter because of the long yellow stripes that run all along its body. 

We were all gathered around watching his tongue wiggle and "smell" when a little red eft crawled out from under the leaf litter right next to the garter! (If you zoom in on the picture you can see him to the right of snakes head!)

We all held our breath and wondered if the snake would eat the red eft, but the snake hardly moved and little eft was safe beneath the leaves again (you can see his tail poking from under the yellow/brown leaf if you look really closely!) We wondered why he didn't try and eat the eft and thought maybe he was distracted by us or maybe he was cold. 

The sun dappled yellow trail...

A wonderful moist day for mushrooming! There was a beautiful circle formation of mushrooms we didn't recognize growing from a hemlock (above) and a huge family of turkey tails on a downed log along the path (below)

Our hike made us hungry and we were surprised to see that the weather had changed since we checked it! The big grey clouds had disappeared and the sun was keeping us warm, so warm that we decided to eat our lunch outside! 

While Samantha was visiting her Grandmother, a ruffed grouse flew into their window and died. Samantha brought the beautiful bird in for us to see. Many of the children wanted to feel its feathers and feet. We decided that it looked peaceful. 

We love the common ground center and all of its land, people, and animals. As a thank you we decided to plant some bulbs near the yellow trail where we had been hiking. We planted daffodils and crocus that will sleep underground all winter long until the snow melts and days grow longer. When spring comes and earth begins to wake we can watch them grow, catch sunbeams in their cups, and feed the bees.  

Planting bulbs and marking them with our decorated sticks.