By Erin Boehme, Dandelion teacher
May Day is a joyous spring festival at Wild Roots Forest School. Children love to practice dancing around the maypole while holding onto the colorful ribbons and singing May Day songs. They will even enjoy this activity on their own, especially when accompanied by The Root Children Story, included below as an audio file. Here are the steps to crafting a Maypole at home. Materials: ~ A wooden pole (straight tree branch, broom stick, rake handle, porch post or a slim live tree) ~Horseshoe nails or heavy duty staples OR a drill to make holes through wooden pole ~Colorful ribbons, strings, strips of fabric(even fabric that is dyed or painted) ~ A hole in the ground or stable base or live tree Measure and prepare ribbons, string or fabric: Make sure the length go the ribbons reach from the top of the pole to the ground and that there's enough slack on the ribbon to hold onto when dancing. Secure the ribbons to the top of the wooden pole: Pound horseshoe nails or staples into the top of the pole, but make sure not to pound them in all the way. Put in one for each ribbon you will tie tot the pole. Tie a ribbon to each nail or staple around the circumference of pole. *If you are using a drill, make 2 holes in the wooden pole big enough to put 3 ribbons through each hole and secure with a knot on the other side. Live tree or porch post:
If using a skinny live tree or porch post, use a strong wire to tie ribbons on and around in a loop. Then take the wire and loop around tree or post at a good height securing tight enough to prevent slipping. Install wooden pole in a hole in the ground secure with large rocks at the base if needed. Decorate the top with flowers and greenery Flowers are always a special addition as a crown or in the hair for May Day play! HAPPY MAY DAY!!
2 Comments
By Natalia Pareja and Erin Boehme Garden bouquets are fancy and simple. Simply take note of the beauty blooming around you, express your gratitude for the flowers and the plants with your children. Mention how wonderful it would be to have flowers in the house for dinner or tea. Give your child a small basket or bucket, model for them how to pick a flower with a long stem so it can get a drink of water from a vase. Ask the plants for permission to share their blossoms. Remember reciprocity helps. Possible ways to exchange are gifting the plant a song, spoken work of gratitude, one of your hairs, or by tending the plant in it's home. Have a vase or jar ready for them to put each little flower into and tell them to make sure the stems are in the water so the flowers can get a drink. Little ones will spend a long time picking, singing and making wonderous bouquets of flowers for your home. Put the arrangement(s) on the dinner table or out for tea time. Honor the care your child has taken to make your home beautiful, by saying "thank you for making our home beautiful" rather than praise like "good job". It's important to name and validate a worthy job done well. When children know they have made a meaningful contribution to the family, they will begin to look for ways to do it more often. You might find they are more capable of making meaningful contributions than you ever imagined. By C.J. Cintas, Cattails teacher
Expressing gratitude has been proven to boost one’s emotional and physical health. Sometimes it’s difficult to really express, feel or think about what you are grateful for. Here's a little trick: Find something that can fill with pieces of folded paper. It can be a jar, pockets, a bowl, a box, a vase...anything that can collect 10-20 pieces of folded paper. Place your vessel in an area that you frequent in your home. My sister likes to keep hers in her kitchen. Begin filling the vessel Fill it with written words, with pictures you and your children have drawn, maybe a puzzle piece, or nature find. Put anything in there that will remind you of the thing or time you are grateful for. Set a daily time to pick something out I suggest you do it at meal times because it is often a time when everyone is gathered. Have each person choose an item without looking. How exciting, a surprise of thanks! Read or sing or tell the story out loud At the basis of words are rhythms and vibrations that have an impact on your environment. Read or share the gratitude so everyone knows what it is. You never know you might just be grateful for the same thing. Enjoy and repeat Continue to replenish your gratitude vessel with offerings of gratitude as they come along. If you give gratitude to water with a bowl to be kept full. It’s said to have a Genie living in it. House plants need watering?
Pro-tip#1 Set them all together in a place tat can get wet. Set out a large bowl, pot, or bucket with water. Put out a small measuring cup or other vessel for transferring water. Be sure to use a small pouring vessel or this will be over immediately. Invite your child to give the plants a big drink. When a child asks a "big" question Pro-tip #2 Break it down and try to figure out what it is that is really being asked. Let them ask the next questions, rather than feeling the need to tell them everything you know about the subject. By Natalia Pareja, Acorns teacher
Setting the stage for play can be as simple as hanging up a blanket. If you hang it straight up and down, you have a home theater. The children love to act out the stories they have heard over and over again. You may take the role of the narrator, but if you’d rather, play the audio recording of one of our stories while they act it out. If children are familiar enough with the story, this could be a good time for them to direct their own and put on a play- I am sure they can find a talented cast of actors among their toys (or willing adults). If you let it hang on two sides- a home or a fort! The allowance of solitude and undirected play is important for children, these spaces provide that. Simple additions, such as a log to sit on, a small table, a chair, even an upside-down box, give life to this home. With a little love, you will be surprised at how these simple homes invite independent and imaginative play. Creating Plant Rainbows
By Amalia Smith-Hale, Elderberries teacher Take a walk around your neighborhood or a local park. Take a moment to observe all of the plants and flowers in bloom around you. Can you find a plant of every color of the rainbow? How many different shades of green can you find? What difference can you observe between each of the plants? How do they feel? How do they smell? How is their shape different or similar? Creating Rock Rainbows By Lauren Newey, Cattails teacher When you look closely and compare rocks, you can see that they are all colors of the rainbow. On a wander with a child, ask them to find all of the colors of the rainbow in the rocks they collect. If you get them wet, the colors change. Creating a Rainbow Indoors When indoors send your child to find objects that are the colors of the rainbow. Search the house to make a color arrangement! Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Pink By Lia Grippo
Play is part of our human genius and serves a wide variety of necessary functions. Play is the primary means of learning how to be a part of the world, without which parts of our humanity become stunted. Children will play with all of the themes that are present in their lives. They will, and must, play with everything, even (and especially) difficult and confusing topics. Watching children play out uncomfortable themes imaginatively, can be painful, and in an effort to protect our children (or ourselves) we might try to redirect or stop such play. However, play is a safe place for children to experience the world around them, for in play, they are able to control how much fear and/or discomfort they will tackle at once. They control the content of their imaginations and therefore can dose themselves appropriate to their needs. Play is where we humans learn to regulate our fear response, where we learn what is and isn’t really dangerous. When we play with that which might frighten us, we practice what we might do in response, we learn how to avoid under responding and over responding to all manner of situations. This is no trivial undertaking. Play is powerful. In our current situation, our children’s opportunities for play with others are curtailed and we as parents find ourselves in the role of supporting play, amongst all of our other responsibilities. In order to do this, we must pay attention to their play. This doesn’t mean we watch them all day long. Quite the contrary. We need only tune our ears, and maybe our peripheral vision, into their play now and again. In fact, staring at our children while they play can sometimes have a disruptive effect. ~Notice the theme of their play.~Notice what props they might use. ~Are there times of the day when your child plays in a physically active way? ~Are there times of the day when your child plays close to the ground in a quieter way? ~Are there times when they can’t seem to figure out what to do with themselves? When to play with our children and when not to? A few notes on playing with our children. Often I find that adults (mom’s especially) don’t enjoy playing with our children as much as we think we should. This is normal and typical. In fact, the young child is looking to adults to imitate adult life, which can of course be playful, but tends to be a different type of play than that of the young child. Far less often are parents interested, of their own accord, to engage in “let’s pretend” play. However, now more than ever, our children don’t have the other children for playmates that they rely on. There are some basic foundations to real play. The first of which, is that playmates must want to play. If one isn’t genuinely having fun and playing because they want to it isn’t actually play. Keep that in mind and play with your child when you genuinely want to and enjoy it. You are not obligated to “play.” That would be an oxymoron. However, when you find yourself feeling genuinely playful, by all means, play with your child. The second foundation of real play is that anyone is free to quit at any time. This is what makes play the best vehicle for learning empathy, compromise, self regulation and a host of other pro-social skills. If your playmates can quit the game at any time, then it becomes imperative that we notice when they are happy or unhappy in the play. If your playmates are unhappy they will stop playing. Therefore, we learn to observe, and adapt creatively. When parents play imaginative games with children we often follow their rules without inserting our own wishes or ideas into the play. Before long, we might find that our children become demanding or domineering in their play with us. This is always a sign that we adults have not been engaging in genuine play. When you aren’t enjoying the play, it is best to stop playing and return when you really want to. Keeping play authentic is healthy modeling for children. By Sespe Miller, Acorns teacher Oh brother wind, How you always play tricks, Dancing through our hair and singing through leaves. Oh brother wind, How you always teach us lessons, Like which direction storms come from, where smells are drifting from, and how animals are moving through the forest. We are constantly modeling for children, and we can help them drop into their senses at any time when outside simply by asking “Where is brother wind coming from?” Sometimes the breeze is so soft that you can’t feel him at all, yet he is still there. Brother wind carries smells along his path. Simply find a hair from your head and hold it up, the little hair can tell you where the wind is coming from. Does the wind move in different directions during the day then during the night? Play with Brother Wind, he always teaches us lessons. |
AuthorWild Roots staff authors include Erin Boehme, Lia Grippo, CJ Cintas, Anne McCarthy, Tyler Starbard, Jenn Sepulveda, Heather Young, Amalia Smith Hale, Natalia Pareja... Archives
May 2020
Categories
All
|