Our last outing of the fall took us to Arroyo Park. The weather was cool but all the Fiddleheads came prepared for a fun exploring day. After some rearranging of clothing, a quick trash pick up (thanks to the group for living the motto
You See It, You Own It), and our morning check-in circle, we headed down the trail towards the creek.
We did not get far before the girls were playing and exploring along the creek's edge, and sometimes in the creek itself. We talked about
Safety First as our most important motto, acknowledging that when our weather gets colder, our body needs to work harder. When we play in the creek, there is a known risk for getting ourselves wet. We tried our hardest to stay dry... but as we know, it's so tough to do so when Explorer's fever takes over. Our Fiddleheads are working on their GEC mottos, and we will only continue this as the group moves forward into future seasons.
We also discovered some cool things along the way.... Mushrooms and other fungi littered the ground, nurse logs, and trees that we passed. We started counting the number of types of fungus we saw, but we found so many that we lost track! We also met nature's sweet treat, Licorice Fern. Mentors helped explain how we harvest this plant (ask your daughter about the 1 in 20 Principle) and passed out some root for the girls to taste. Many girls loved it, others spat it out with a "yuck!". To each their own. :)
 |
| There's a fungus among us...! |
The girls made a collaborative decision to check out the "magic tree." Ask your daughter to take you there and find out why we think this tree is so special. We had seen a boys explorers club group pass us while we were exploring by the creek. We thought is might be fun to put our fox feet on and try sneaking up on the boys. We could hear them playing high above the magic tree...so we did our best sneaking, crawling our way along the trail, and slowly crossing the tree...
But we were not sneaky enough! The boys heard us coming. Thankfully, we all decided together that a big group game of Spiders Web would be fun. Dorothy, one of our Fiddleheads, was elected the spider and for nearly 45 minutes no one could get past her and her keen observation skills. The girls worked together with the Short Tailed Weasels to finally finish the game, allowing the bugs to win! This is a tested and true favorite game of GEC, and this was an extra-awesome way to introduce this game to the Fiddleheads.
 |
| Dorothy, our super-scary spider |
After finishing the game, the girls headed back down the magic tree to enjoy a Peaceful Place by the rushing arroyo ("creek" in Spanish). The girls sat silently and still, writing in their journals, splashing in the water, building towers from rocks, and tossing leaves. We joined together for our Web of Life activity, which we do to culminate every season of Girls Explorers Club. The girls reviewed our four fall outings together, and reminisced about what we connected to in nature during these outings. The girls connected to birds, rocks, ferns and so much more. We reminded the girls that We Are All Teachers - Can 7 or 8 year olds be teachers to adults? You bet! As explorers with nature knowledge, we have a responsibility to Walk Our Talk in the community, and help nature thrive as we'd like it to. We rounded out our day with a quick walk back, and some final gratitude for this group. What a great season we've had together! Looking forward to more with the Fiddleheads. Our Words of the Day: "Happy Arroyo Web Day!"
Mottos especially in use today:
*Safety First
*Walk Your Talk
*We Are All Teachers
*You See It, You Own It
To see more photos of our day, head over to our photo album!
-Hannah and Rebecca
No comments:
Post a Comment