Happy first week of preschool, 2021!
This week the Nuthatches set down roots in a new camp!
We also welcomed a few new faces: Instructors Will, Ian and Nora Fox, and CIT Astrid. Our old friend Mira also joined us for a few days! After playing name games with “banana balls” a few times, the Nuthatches have really got everybody’s names down!
Our camp is now next to Turkey Knoll, and it has some wonderful features! There’s a seesaw, a debris fort, a backpack hanger, and the shelter made with woven cattail. We also made a fire circle and reviewed the different sizes of firewood: wispies, pencils/pinkies, markers, and logs. The Nuthatches have already begun to explore all the corners of this new camp, but we haven’t found a good name yet. Let’s keep thinking about it!
One of the best parts of this week was the time we spent finding, following, and identifying tracks in the snow. The Nuthatches found fox tracks, squirrel tracks, and Ian tracks. When we followed them, we found Ian!
Do you know the name of the people who lived on and stewarded this land for centuries? We learned that they call themselves the Gayogo̱hó:nǫ’, which means People of the Great Swamp. We practiced the pronunciation of Gayogo̱hó:nǫ’, which you can learn by asking your preschooler or watching this video of Gayogo̱hó:nǫ’ educator Stephen Henhawk teaching some of the language. We reviewed the Three Respects and came up with some ways that we can take care of the land so that ten years in the future, the trees will be as big as our circle and there will still be children laughing and playing in the forest!
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