What an exciting morning: Woolly Bear Race 2019! Racers at the ready, trainers watching and hoping, we all cheered the fuzzy winter predictors up their strings! Some to victory, some to sleep, they all did their best. We stand proud of our unknowing racers and of their kind and caring trainers.
When the race was all over, they were released to sweet mint and dandelion leaves or cared for for the rest of the day and returned to where they were found near home. We settled in for snack and a story: an old Chinese folktale about the value of learning from the forest, our friends, and from folks unlike ourselves.
Now ready for the rest of the day, the FORESTers split into two groups: coal-burning spoons and a camp mancala board to play during free time in one group; and, in the other, carving mallets and throwing sticks.
For the rest of the afternoon, we played a forest simulation game called Life and Death in the Forest—a running, hiding, and tagging adventure between herbivores, omnivores, carnivores, human hunters, and a particularly well dressed character, “Forest Fire.” To close the day, we brought the energy back inward (and outward at the same time) by all doing a “sit spot,” a kind of meditation that asks the kids to be alone, at their own spot in the forest, and be in that moment, in that place, by observing with all of their senses. When they silently returned from their spot, they were bestowed with a new Nature Name.
We explained that the name is a way to learn a lesson from nature by learning everything they can about whichever name they were given. Some kids expect to receive a name that they perceive as powerful—usually a wolf or a bear or someone else at the top of the food chain—and so can experience a bit of disappointment at the idea of being called a plant or an insect or something other than a carnivore. We help them to understand that all living things have lessons to teach and all hold their own kind of power, from the smallest insect to an oddly named mushroom to the youngest child in the group.