Tuesday arrived and our group of mostly 4 and 5 year olds arrived eager to check on the snowmen we built a couple weeks ago. They noticed the snowmen had disappeared and the children found tracks and decided they must have snuck off! We literally spent the rest of the day searching for the "rascally snowmen" as they referred to them. At one point we took a break in Erin's "cave" (a space under a tree she had pruned and cleared out awhile back) and had tea and snacks. Then a child caught sight of the snowmen just over the hill and we were off again. We have two participants who both usually want to be "leader" on our adventure walks and this week one of them asked the other if they could both lead together and they held hands as the group followed them! Each child kept adding different parts to this story of the rascally snowmen ("Don't run into trees- they are barbed wire and will dead you!" "Walk carefully- the snowmen might have set traps for us!") and incorporating the other children's parts of the story. The group headed straight down the steep part of the woodland and it took quite a loooong time to get back up, but they were so encouraging of one another. They absolutely crashed to rest when we arrived back at their fort minutes before the parents arrived. They are such little humans and to see an increase in the frequency of those moments of them considering one another and developing more impulse control and awareness- sigh, it just warms my heart.
- Cassie Friesen
