night peace

Last night we read the first of this year's Enki Nature Stories, Night Peace, which is a story that focuses on the day/night cycle. Here's The Map Man and the boys waiting in front of the fireplace for me to start reading.









This morning we recalled the story, then created a scene from the story out of pieces of wool roving on a flannel board. I got the kids going by creating the trunk of the Beech (the main "character" in the story). The boys added branches and leaves. At that point, I sat back and let them create the scene they wanted.


They decided to reproduce the kids playing in and around Beech during the day. Here Zoo Boy creates a boy with a red shirt.








J works on creating another boy. I created a child too, with dark skin, long black hair, and a purple dress -- the boys described her as an "older girl" who was playing with the younger boys and Beech. Meanwhile, Zoo Boy worked on adding ground and roots below the ground.






Our finished scene. The boys and I were well pleased with our results.

Ideally we would have followed this up with a trip to a local park for the kids to climb in the branches of the trees, but it was a wet day, and we ran into a couple of unexpected glitches in getting out as a family today. Fortunately, the boys were climbing in those trees just last week, and I think is why they identified so well with this particular scene from the story.