What a joy it is to be outdoors with the children, whether in a downpour or glorious October sunshine! We spent this week learning new parts of the land, collecting tinder for next week’s fire focus, and exploring ideas of humanity and fairness through play and puppets.
Many of the teachings at Flying Deer, whether about ecology, awareness, or wilderness skills, are rooted in practices and skills of indigenous peoples. In recognizing Indigenous People’s Day this week, we talked about land acknowledgements and the Mohican people. For young children, abstract thinking and reasoning can be hard to connect with or understand. So instead we used puppet shows to explore themes of land, respect, and fairness.
Julie put on an amazing puppet show about a beaver in search of a new home who eventually flooded a forest full of animals when he didn’t take into account those who were already living in the landscape. Woolly Bears helped to finish the puppet show by offering ideas on what the beaver could do, discussing whether it was fair or OK for the beaver to act that way and offering solutions on how all the animals might be able to get their needs met without harming others. It was very moving to hear the children work through the challenge and offer their insights. In these moments, we remember that through play we learn so many important lessons about respect, consent, and boundaries.
A big moment this week was receiving our nature names! The wily and often kooky Old Man Coyote arrived with his usual bag of tricks and silliness. He led us to Elder Stone where children had the choice to keep an old nature name or welcome a new name.
We also took advantage of the warm weather to get to know new parts of the land. We waded into the swamp to collect cattails, visited the edge of the stream to fill our homemade tinder bags with milkweed seeds and finally, climbed a big mountain to harvest birch bark from the big birch forest. Earlier in the week we waxed and waterproofed our hand-dyed tinder bags. These tinder bags will help us light fires all winter long! Next week we’ll dive into fire, always a favorite!
—JJ, Julie, and the Forest K counselors
October 16, 2020