We had so much fun this week with pumpkins! When we arrived to Trillium Camp on Monday we found a large pumpkin waiting for us. The children were very excited to find this surprise. We cut open our pumpkin and removed the seeds. The kids worked very hard to get them all out. On Tuesday and Wednesday we hammered pieces of the meat of the pumpkin to boards to make feeders for the animals. We placed them around camp so we can make observations of what might like to eat it. So far we saw ants and slugs enjoying them. We hope to see some teeth marks of larger animals too eventually. We also spotted a large toad while placing our feeders! On Thursday we roasted our seeds and alomst everyone loved them.

We also got out the costume box on Monday and Thursday and the children had a lot of fun becoming different animals and people. Many became owls. We also had a pizza maker, a parent, a fairy or two, and a few horses.

Another amazing thing that happed this week was that Trillium camp flooded on Tueday night. The children loved playing in the puddles and mud all week. On Thursday we gathered sand and brought it down to fill a big hole left by the raging water.

So far this fall we have been focusing on getting to know each other, establishing ground rules and noticing all the abundance that this time of year has to offer! One of our first harvesting activities was to make sun tea with sumac, goldenrod, and white pine needles. It was delicious and the kids loved learning about the plants and the process of making the tea. The next week we roasted apples over the fire. Every time we build a fire the kids love it. They help gather fire wood and wispies to start the fires. They sing the fire sing with us to get it going:

Of course we have played a lot of running games, and a lot of fun imagination games in the sandbox and creek. We have found many toads, had visits from chipmunks, and caught crayfish in the creek.

 This past week we met the shagbark hickory tree and learned to identify it and it’s nuts.  We also smashed hickory nuts in our large smasher then boiled them in a gallon of water over the fire.  After straining out the nut meat and shells, we enjoyed our hickory nut milk. On a wonder to meet Grandmother Hickory the kids asked why this tree had a name.  We talked about how much bigger this tree is than all the other hickory trees around and how the seeds that grew the smaller trees had likely come from the Grandmother tree. We then measured around her trunk and found it took one instructor and three children holding hands to reach around her trunk. This spurred all the children to start measuring around the other hickory trees and deciding who was mom, brother, baby, etc.

We have also been singing the I thank the earth song a lot:

I thank the earth for feeding my body
I thank the sun for warming my bones
I thank the trees for the air that I breathe, and
I thank the water for nourishing my soul