Sometimes it's hard to believe how wonderful an experience can be. It was like that today up on the mountain. Perfect weather and the girls so enjoyed their time up there.
One of the highlights was watching the girls make a fire for the Big Bad Wolf to fall into. A game we often play on the mountain is the Three Little Pigs and the Wolf always falls into the fire and burns his rear end. They hysterically laugh every time that the wolf runs
away holding his rear end, screaming... (you can guess who the Big Bad Wolf was!)
I noticed Lily kneeling down next to the fire with two sticks rubbing them furiously. One of the other
girls asked her what she was doing. "I'm starting the fire by rubbing sticks, I saw it on TV".
Féline followed this idea but she couldn't quite make up her mind whether the sticks were to make fire or whether they were the Doctors instruments for fixing the Wolfs bottom!
Another idea Féline had was to find rocks to put around the fire for people to sit on.
Unfortunately she couldn't get the other girls to cooperate with her as they wanted to put rocks around the edge of the fire to keep it safe.
As the girls searched for wood, rolled stones to the fire and found dry bracken, they unearthed
lots of little creatures and we would hear the frantic calls to other girls to come and have a look.
We have dubbed Mika the Queen of Insects as she is so interested in everything she finds.
The mountain is a wonderful place to build resilience in children. As they struggle with the challenges of climbing trees, pulling logs together, holding cicadas in their hands and learning to take risks, they grow in confidence and learn what they can do on their own and what they can do
with just a little bit of help. Growing strong in mind, body and soul.
Such joy and so many learning opportunities all provided free of charge in our backyard!
What wonderful adventures you have. Imogene thought that maybe next time you could pretend to toast marshmallows on the fire like she did in Fiji.
ReplyDeleteToday we made another fire outside at school. Mrs Bayes ran inside to look for some marshmallows but there wasn't any. Imogene we think you have had a good idea and we are going to take some marshmallows up to Mt St John to cook on our fire next week.
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