Juggling eyes

Tansi

We started the weekend with a late night walk under a very beautiful grandmother moon and the happy sounds of Canadian Geese on their way South.  Runa thought they must get very tired to fly so far.  While I wish this child would sleep more I also treasure these weird in between moments we share.

We also read "Nanabush loses his eyeballs" by Daphnie Odjig.  While the book shows its birth in the 1970s, the story was great and lead itself to a fun out loud read and since we know the names of some of the animals in Cree we got to use them.  The throwing of eyeballs made this a great hit with the children and it includes a lot of good story medicine.  I would recommend this book.

Sunday morning, I got it together to coral everyone for circle time.  It helped to have the new table with our circle supplies already set out.  It made it easy to pull things together.  It would be nice to smudge once without having someone ask questions or trying to find your tickle spots while you do it.  We sang the woman's honoring song and Sophie brought down her drum.  Then we read "Nanabush and the Wild Rosebushes" which I did not think could be as good as eyeball throwing, but it did pretty well.  Again the story worked well to read out loud.  The characters were engaging and the fat bored bunny and grumpy rose bush made the children laugh.  Both these stories would led themselves well to a group setting and could easily have accompanying crafts.

In one of those perfect moments, Runa got out supplies and put us to work writing our own Nanabush story.  We are working on "Nanabush and the spooky pumpkin".  I will post pictures when we are done.  These moments are great as I get to see Runa engaging with the stories and also taking on the role of the story teller.  I see her slipping into the stream of our culture and know these times will be with her forever.  I would really recommend these books and taking the time to make your own.  We love reading them later and it is great to work together as a family to create something.  So stop juggling your eyes!!