Friday (10/29):

This past Friday at Forest Playschool we got to celebrate Halloween! It was so exciting to see so many fun costumes at drop-off in the morning. In the spirit of all things Halloween, we searched the front yard for 35 spooky and colorful ghosts.

We were also lucky to have such a beautiful day to celebrate. Looking forward to an adventure where we could spend more time in the sun, our Morning Meeting Leader chose for us to head down to Beaver Pond. We started our hike down after Snack and Story.

Beaver Pond was filled with so much sunshine! Before we even got to the space where we would play, we found a crayfish in a stream we had to cross over. We scooped him up in one of our “looky-no-touchy” bins and brought him to the pond with us. At Beaver Pond we found 6 Eastern Newts to add to our bin too, and one friend even spotted another camouflaged crayfish right before we left.

While some friends spent the afternoon looking for critters, others were building mud pies, stomping their boots, or pretending to fish. We even had a speaker with us playing Halloween music the whole time so some friends had a Halloween mud dance party!

We hiked back up for lunch and a special treat around the fire at Forest Camp. One of our friends so kindly brought apple cider for us to drink warm during lunchtime. We had so much fun at Beaver Pond today that we lost track of time, and lunch went all the way to pick up! We quickly had Thank You Circle before hiking back to the barn and sending everyone on their way.

Monday (11/1):

We started our first day of November searching for turkeys this morning! Though we were mostly still in the Halloween spirit, with a few of our friends showing up in costumes. Together we found thirty pictures of turkeys hiding around the front yard.

At Morning Meeting today, our Morning Meeting leader decided that we should spend the day at Beaver Pond. After our snack and story at Forest Camp we headed out on our way. This was a particularly wet Monday after the Halloween rainstorms the day before. Along our hike, everyone enjoyed stomping in the squishy mud at Hemlock Swamp.

Beaver Pond was so wet and flooded from all the rain—but that didn’t stop us from having fun, it just meant that there was more mud to play in! With water spread thin along the surface we found more newts further away from the pond than we ever had, and while some of our friends stomped their boots and splashed around others kept busy making mud soup.

We hiked back up to Forest Camp for lunch and to end our day. At Forest Camp friends enjoyed walking along our obstacle course, playing hide-and-seek, and cooking in our mud kitchen.