november 3
What a great day! We thoroughly enjoyed the sunshine and had an absolute blast playing on and around a new climbing tree. In fact, we spent the ENTIRE day with this tree :) At first it was an owl home (because we’re owls) and then it became a wolf’s den (because the bad wolf lived there), and later in the day it became a home that we had to build using hammers (long sticks) and nails (small twigs). “Deidre! We’re working SO hard on our house!” “Yeah, it’s going to take us a very long time! Like a hundred minutes!” :)
Near our new tree friend, there were lots of ginkgo trees. Autumn has been asking every day if we can collect ginkgo nuts again this year. So, we scoured the grass for little squishy (and very stinky) orange fruits and ended up finding eight of them. We counted them again and again and decided that we’ll cook them tomorrow and eat the bright green nuts that are hiding beneath the sticky flesh. Rigel said that we can each eat two, “I will eat two, Autumn gets two, Sylvie gets two and then Deidre can have two.”
After lunch, we laid in the sun and watched the clouds and airplanes flying past. It was very relaxing.
At the end of the day, we collected tinder to make a fire. Rigel chose lint from the dryer, Autumn chose a handful of dried leaves, and Sylvie chose a crumpled up piece of paper. We placed the tinder in the middle of the fire pit and then worked as a team to balance our kindling (bamboo) around the tinder in the shape of a tent. The bamboo kept falling over and we got a bit frustrated, but Deidre gave us some pointers and we were finally able to do it. We felt very proud when it stood up all on its own! The best part was when we each got to light a match and toss it into the fire pit.
While we watched the fire catch, we talked about how to be safe around a fire and to always make sure we’re with a grown-up when using matches. The last step was to very carefully place cedar on top of the flames!
We loved watching the fire and also saying, “The fire is getting small so we need to add more wood to make it big again.” We decided that we want to build another fire tomorrow and make s’mores!!