As I sit outside and begin to write, three girls sit with me and ask me what I'm doing. "I'm writing a story about my day. Would you like to help me?" They gladly agree and we start by each of them typing in their names, then they tell me what to write: Lilly, Molly, and Friar are with me in the kindergarten. We are sending you a message. It's very muddy here and there's also wood chips on the ground. It's a sunny day and cloudy with just a little bit of wind. Today we are going to swing and play hide and seek and tip. We are going to go up into the woods and make soup. We will play and pick up sticks.
The daily routine here is pretty much what those children described. The children play for long uninterrupted hours in the garden or outdoor kitchen, there is a morning tea routine and they are invited to participate in a group time during this time. I was excited to be able to read them 'Wombat Stew' today and I gave them the book as a thank you gift. A treck to the forest, just outside the gate occurs each morning and they come back to the outdoor kitchen for lunch, then more play in the garden. Each afternoon there is another opportunity to go to the forest, usually centered around the fire pit. On Monday we roasted marshmallows, today we cooked potato and leek soup that had been prepared back in the kitchen. The fire pit has it's rituals of helpers going up earlier to gather fire wood and start the fire. This process is fully given over to the children, under guidance and with support. They select the kindling, prepare cotton wool and Vaseline as a fire starter, build the beginnings of it with small twigs and branches and light the fire with flint. They then place on bigger logs, sawing those that are too long with real saws on saw horses. The children own this process. This usually marks the end of the day when the children are then gathered to share in the food and finally to reflect on their favorite part of the day before heading back to the garden where parents are waiting.
The best part of the day for me was this:
We went to the 'dragon tree'. This is a fallen tree that has formed itself into a dragons head, complete with eye and nostrils. It is in a clearing of the forest and accompanied by stumps and fallen trees perfect for climbing on. Another nearby tree is a tangle of bouncy branches that go every which way and there are about eight children in there with an educator.
I see Neil with a group of about five children sitting aloft a huge fallen tree that slopes downwards into the wilderness. It's in the sun and as I'm jet lagged and cold I choose that place to spend these long moments of time before lunch. I was on that tree for almost two hours, most of it spent with a little nearly three year old who invited me to play. We started negotiating walking along the tree, sometimes she needed a steadying hand and sometimes she was independent, but she persevered to a point, then looking down she said "this is too big" meaning we were a long way from the ground and so we turned back. We stopped where the tree branches forked and she made her way to a tangle of branches at the ground. Down there she sat and I basked in the sun, enjoying the quiet, the moment of just being at peace with each other and the world. The others had deserted us and we were alone with the felled tree. She started to gather moss from a shaded branch and she squashed it and compacted it into a ball before offering it to me. I took her lead and compacted it more. She added to this collection of moss until we had a ball about the size of a tennis ball. She'd give me an offering and I'd squish and compact it, both of us enjoying the interaction, the sensation of the cool flakey moss, the sun and the warmth.
After a while I started to think of ways to hold our ball together. I had a head band on my wrist and one in my hair. I sacrificed these and the little girl gave me one from her hair. These bands drew the moss into a secure little ball that I threw into the air and caught. She laid on her back amongst the tangle and said 'throw it' and I did so for some time as she watched the brilliant green flying towards the sun, to be caught and thrown again. It was bliss.
Soon we heard the gathering song "everyone to the meeting tree, everyone to the meeting tree" and we reluctantly made our way from this magical place. We saw Neil on the way and he had a bag of supplies. I asked him for twine and together the little girl and I bound our ball tighter. I tied a knot and she complained that it was too long so I sent her to Neil to have it trimmed. The ball was finished and she held it in her hands all the way back to the garden where we found a safe place to put it.
So that was my favorite part of the day. A time of rest and peace and real engagement with another person, a small person who delighted in the world around her and was given the gift of discovery and time to discover. The gift of pure engagement with another person and equal delight in each other's company.
So again I could write of the numerous experiences I had today along the same line. There were many, I assure you and I feel so privileged to have been here for this short time and been given this gift of insight into the possibilities for children given access to wild and untamed spaces. Access to this kind of interaction not only with each other and the adults around them but with the natural world.
I'll finish here. If you feel the urge to send a post would you consider a time or moment when you were in a zone with a child, where the minutes and hours just melted and you had this gift of being truly together. I'd love to hear of it.
