It ended up being a beautiful afternoon on the bluff with hardly any smoke. The squirrels were eager to colour with chalk, making flowers, bees and even a lone alligator was drawn. Every colour we had was used! Before we headed up the hill we also had to complete a chalk obstacle course. The kids hopped from stone to stone, crossed a log, scaled a mountain, avoided an alligator, ran from a yeti, jumped onto an airplane and clouds and even followed a twisty path. Most of them even did it multiple times at top speed!
As we walked up the hill we searched for items on our team scavenger hunt, sharing our finds with the group and ticking the boxes. We also harvested some mountain ash berries to play with in our mud kitchen later.
After quickly exploring our spot we did a safety check, which we will be doing on a regular basis and had our snacks. Then, to get to know our space we made maps, adding landmarks such as big trees and where we were sitting.
Safe, and ready to go, we started a game. In our game, the squirrels had to work together to get all the cones to their nest, taking one at a time. The catch was, while you were out of your nest you had to watch out for Ms. Jessie the bobcat waiting to tag you. If you were caught by the bobcat, you would have to surrender the cones. And if you took the pink cones you would get very sleepy. As the game progressed you could take pink ones without getting sleepy but there were two bobcats to watch out for! The squirrels enjoyed it and liked creating distractions and laughing as they masterfully evaded the bobcats.
For a fun activity we made leaf shish kebabs, spearing leaves, grass and other plants onto our sticks, leading right into freetime with mud kitchen- a big hit! Almost every creation you can imagine was made using dirt, plants, water, containers and bowls. There were also multiple restaurants for the stuffies. One student created Froggy Delight and wolf's was called Wolfy Delight and so on.
Tool circle was also fun for some of the kids, drilling into a log and hammering nails into it. There was also a game of hide and seek some students started, hiding among the trees and taking turns counting.
Near the end of class we did a sit spot, making charms or necklaces with beads, yarn and shells from Ms. Jessie's travels;
your squirrel might have one to show you! We tried to listen to what we could hear going on in nature as we did our sit spot and we will do a sit spot once a week.
Everyone gathered their things and we read a book called The secret fawn by the fence before walking down the hill chatting about what we should do next week.
See you next week squirrels!!!
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