September at Cedar + Bones

Our first month together was about becoming a school. The children learned the forest, learned about one another and, pretty quickly, started showing us what Cedar + Bones will become. We started in late summer and, over those first few weeks, watched the forest begin to turn to fall right alongside us, guiding much of what the children discovered, gathered and made.

Child-Led

Each day we found ourselves spending more and more time deep in the forest. What we originally built as a place just for morning gathering, has become the center of gravity for our days.

The children are beginning to really know this place. They wander, explore, discover and return to the same places again and again. They name them too. Ask them about The Hot Tub and The Bone Pit!

We don’t have many rules here. This is a place of yes. A place for children to be loud, to roam, to be wild, to be silent, to listen, to wonder, to create and most importantly, to be themselves and belong.

The rules we do have are about safety and respect. Teachers need to be able to see you. Ask before climbing. We don’t take, we ask.

Sticks are for children. They’re tools, props, building materials, walking sticks, wands, and sometimes just something that makes a kid feel a little bigger and stronger. Our job is to help them use sticks safely around others.

So we taught them to measure sticks against their bodies: shorter than your arm is a tool, longer than your arm is a walking stick, and anything taller than your body gets dragged with one end on the ground. That gets boring pretty quickly, so they’ve also learned a variety of ways to make a giant stick the size they actually want.

What We Found + What We Made

Forest tea was in high demand when the blackberries were everywhere. The children helped me gather blackberries, salal berries, trailing blackberry leaves, salal leaves, Doug-fir tips, Red cedar tips, hawthorne berries and sometimes even apples.

We found woolly bear caterpillars, snakes, deer, bones and plenty of evidence left behind by animals we didn’t actually see. Coyote scat showed up regularly on the trails, often with hair in it, which gave us plenty to investigate. We talked about camouflage and how animals and insects can “blend in” with the places around them.

The forest also became part of the art studio. We crushed berries with mortar and pestle, gathered pitch and sap, painted with our hands, built fairies, worked on the fort and experimented with the materials we started to find around us.

With Elena, the kids made self-portraits and spent time looking closely at faces, what we all share and what makes each of us different. We explored several printmaking techniques, including stunning sprays of leafs on watercolor paper, and from there the kids started experimenting with whatever was around them. Berries became paint. Fingers, feathers and fall leaves all became ways to make marks.

Elena also introduced her own take on corn husk dolls, giving the kids a mix of loose parts from the art table and the forest to work with. Fabric, ribbon, leaves, ferns, lichen, feathers and whatever else caught their eye became clothing, hair, wings, decorations and completely different characters. The materials were offered, but what each doll became was entirely up to each child.

New Friends + Finding Our Place

Over the past few weeks, the kids have gone from barely knowing one another to hugging, holding hands, running trails together, building together, sitting together, and creating games that carry from one day to the next.

There has also been a lot of purposeful work. Sweeping after lunch. Carrying materials. Moving sticks and logs. Building the fort. Taking care of packs and belongings. Helping care for the places we use together.

Even our circle grew out of that process. We needed places to sit, so I cut a log. One stump became several. Now we have a circle in the forest where we gather, talk, sing and decide where the day might take us.

One of the songs we sometimes sing together is Put Your Roots Down. It’s a good one. We stomp our feet.

Questions We Followed

What’s that sound?
Whose poop is this?
What animal made it?
Why is there hair in it?
Who left this bone here?
What is this sticky stuff coming out of the tree?
What can we make with this?

If your interested in identifying birds you can hear or see, check out Merlin Bird ID, it is completely free and incredibly fast and reliable.