Warmest Holiday Wishes!

Hello to Everyone,

Just a brief announcement that Kids Unplugged will be taking a brief Holiday Hiatus for the next few weeks. We'll be back in action with our Hike, Don't Hibernate! program beginning in January 2010 and look forward to seeing you all, bundled and booted, on the trails then.

In the meanwhile, from the Kids Unplugged family to yours, our warmest wishes for a joyful holiday season and a peaceful and healthy 2010!

Kind Regards,
Gina

Rocks and Logs and Slides, Oh My! An Afternoon at Neperan Park

There's a new playground in town, but it isn't what you might imagine. Tarrytown, New York, with the help of the Natural Playgrounds Company in Concord, New Hampshire, has begun the first phase of constructing a natural play space in the town's Neperan Park.

Unlike traditional play structures, the new playground is built with a child's natural sense of free-spirited adventure in mind. Conventional apparati like monkey bars and free-standing swings are replaced by rock scrambles, nature paths, and log balance-beams. Children are intrinsically inclined toward unstructured, open-ended play and exploration. Typical playgrounds offer kids the opportunity to challenge their gross-motor skills but do little to encourage imaginative play or to nurture their social or emotional connections to one another.
A natural playground offers children numerous options to create their own adventures. Because the structures are incorporated into the park's existing landscape their play is always new.

Our first visit to Neperan Park's new playground was a resounding success. After a short hike down the Old Croton Aqueduct trail ending at the park, the kids headed straight to the wooded area on the park's periphery where the first structures had been installed. A steep slide built right into the hill was the first order of business for many kids. And while the fast ride down was definitely a thrill, having to negotiate a series of well-placed boulder steps up to the slide's entrance was equally captivating. The kids swarmed the hill, attempting to scale their way to the top from myriad angles. Several of those attempts ended, much to their delight, with a hearty down-hill slide in the dirt.

A log, climbing structure also had it's appeal, and being a bit lower to the ground, the younger kids flocked to this area. Kids sat and talked on the logs. They scurried beneath them. They climbed up and walked along their lengths, testing their balance. They hung and dangled and jumped. The logs became a house, a train, a horse, a tunnel. See if all that happens with some monkey bars.

Climbing up another group of rock steps, the kids made their way up to a woodland path that wends it's way through the trees to a series of platforms called the "lookout tower." Kids immediately adopted the structure as a fortress as well as their roles within that great fortress, creating passwords for entry, keeping enemies at bay, looking out for dangers lurking below. They ran up and down the boardwalk, hopping from level to level, hiding out in their new-found clubhouse.

And so it went, kids climbing and running and jumping and sliding. Kids imagining. Kids getting filthy. Kids deep in their play.

When the light started to wane on this, the first Wacky Wednesday since the end of daylight saving time, parents began gathering their tired, dirty brood to head back down the trail for dinner. It was almost like our childhood days in those backyard woods. Almost.

(photos coming soon!)

The Horseman Rides Again! A Halloween Wacky Wednesday

In honor of, and playing into of course, our famous Halloween locale, today's hike took place in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in search of some hidden letterboxes. For those of you who have never heard of letterboxing, it is definitely worth exploring. It is the unplugged version of geocaching, a game which involves searching for hidden containers called 'geocaches' with the aid of a hand-held GPS device. Although their is a small plugged component of letterboxing in that one must visit the official letterboxing website http://letterboxing.org/ to search for exisiting letterboxes and obtain the clues to find them, the majority of the activity is about creativity, imagination, teamwork, outdoor adventure, resourcefulness, appreciation and care for the natural world, and connection to other human beings.

Today's hike was Kids Unplugged's first foray into the world of letterboxing and judging from the enthusiasm of the kids it is an activity we will certainly be revisiting soon. We started out sitting in a circle on the lawn of the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow. The church has it's own burial ground, one in which Washington Irving, the man of the famous Legend, is laid to rest. In our circle we talked a little bit about the legend of the Headless Horseman and I explained about letterboxing and what we were going to be doing on the hike. We read the mysterious clues together and then set out along the path in search of the wood-planked bridge which may have been the one Ichabod Crane sought to cross on he and Gunpowder's fateful ride.

Today's Wacky Wednesday actually took place on Thursday this time, as Wednesday was a washout. Happily, postponing by a day gave us a beautiful autumn afternoon for our foray into the cemetery's beautiful grounds and the foliage and views along Gory Brook were gorgeous. We did encourage the kids to keep their voices a bit lower than normal, but hills to climb, headstones to hide behind and rocks to toss into the brook below continued to draw from them shrieks of glee. What can you do?

There was a great deal of excitement upon reaching the old bridge, and after referring to our clues the kids began counting out the 30-paces mentioned in the narrative. This opened up a conversation about the difference between steps and paces because they all stopped at various points along the trail having reached their personal 30! When it was determined where the average of 30-paces was, they began searching in earnest for the pile of rocks which should have been 5-paces off the trail to the left. And while at first it seemed that the box might have been removed by a letterboxing foe, our group remained undaunted and continued their hunt. A shout from among wet leaves indicated success, and a damp, humus covered plastic box was brought up to the trail for all to see.

After examining the contents, looking through the stamp journal and leaving our own mark, we found a spot to sit for Halloween cookies and a theatrical reading of The Tale of the Headless Horseman, a wonderfully accessible adaptatation of Irving's Legend. And though the second box did appear to be missing, we were able to find the third letterbox hidden within a stone wall on our hike back out of the cemetery.

I joked today that I have been thinking about this hike for months and I was so delighted that we were actually doing it--and with such success. The scenery was beautiful and the activity great fun. The perfect Wacky Wednesday to celebrate the spookiness of Halloween in Sleepy Hollow.

(Photos coming soon!)

Pumpkins & Scarecrows--Halloween with the Garden Sprouts

Today, rainy as it was, marked our last meeting of the autumn Garden Sprouts program at Fishkill Farms. While there was a part of me that thought about staying cozy in the house today when I looked out the window at the thick clouds and cold drizzle, but I took heed instead of my own mantra--There's no bad weather, just the wrong clothes--and bundled up for a soggy morning on the farm. It turned out to be a lovely time, and the rain did let up long enough to allow us a nice walk to visit the chickens and explore the garden for a while.

We started our day with a baking activity, as we have each week, preparing the snack we would later share. Today, to celebrate our time together these past weeks, we baked a pumpkin pie. It was a treat we would enjoy later, warm from the oven, after our garden walk and outdoor crafting.

When the pie was in the oven and everyone was snuggled in boots, hats and raincoats, we headed out in search of the farm's "scarecrows," really just large, inflatable balls with lots of eyes to watch those pesky crows. The children took a great deal of delight in sneaking through the muddy rows of blueberry bushes in search of the balls and shouts of "I see another one!" rang through the field. We saw the remainder of the farm's summer sunflower patch, finding the petal-less brown centers picked clean of their seeds. We sought out other signs of autumn on the farm, old corn stalks, dormant berry bushes, and cozy burrows hidden in the garden. We talked about who might live in those burrows, what they might eat and why they might need to hide underground. We also found a few late season strawberries in the strawberry patch that was well-blanketed with hay to protect them from the coming frost.

With their little pumps primed for a good scarecrow story, we headed back to the farm store to read one of my Halloween favorites, Jeb Scarecrow's Pumpkin Patch by Jana Dillon, about a young scarecrow working to protect his prized patch from the crow's annual harvest celebration. After the story, the kids made their own scarecrow puppets and learned a few Halloween songs and rhymes. And then it was time for pie.

We really had a wonderful time of crafting, baking, storytelling, exploring, and playing on the farm these past weeks. I hope that many new (and returning!) families will join us for our next series of the Garden Sprouts!

Running Free at Untermeyer

Recently I was re-reading that wonderful book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler when I came across the description of the bed that the kids sleep in while they're hiding out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. According to Mrs. Frankweiler, the bed was donated to the museum by Untermeyer. Whether or not this is true I'm not sure, but considering the opulence of the Grecian gardens at the historic estate site in Yonkers, an antique curtained bed is easily believed. And I was delighted that I knew who Untermeyer was when I came to that passage--information that I surely did not have when I read the book nearly 30 years ago (aack).

Untermeyer's glorious gardens were the site of our Wacky Wednesday romp on a perfect October afternoon this week. And though we bypassed the trail leading toward the Old Croton Aqueduct, the grounds and the remaining structures provided us with plenty of diversion.

The gardens are arranged on two tiers, the uppermost tier being home to a huge cross-shaped configuration of canal-like fountains as well as to a truly enormous columned Greek temple. There is also an ampitheater, statues and more columns around the perimeter. The focal point of the lower level is a now-empty, mosaic tiled pool flanked by expansive lawns on either side. It wasn't clear whether the fountains on the upper terrace drained down to the pool, but that seems likely.

On the northern side of the garden is a long stone staircase leading down toward the OCA. I imagine that it is accessible from the trail below, however, the top of the staircase ends at at a gated garden entrance which was locked. The entire garden area sports sweeping views of the Hudson River. We could only imagine it at it's heyday. For our intents and purposes, it was a wonderful space for running, climbing and a long game of tag.

Seeds, Seeds, Seeds!

Has anyone heard the Native American folktale about the Three Sisters? It's a wonderful story to share during the months of the autumn harvest as it celebrates the important roles played by three essential crops: corn, beans, and squash. Today in the Garden Sprouts we talked about, touched, explored and search for all different kinds of seeds--from those cultivated in the garden to those blowing wildly in the meadow breeze.

The children arrived to find the terrace tables covered in all sorts of interesting things. There were pumpkins and squash of various shapes and sizes. There were acorns and beechnut husks and horse chestnuts both in and out of their prickly
casings. There was colorful Indian corn and bowls of all different kinds of beans. We started our day talking about all of these different kinds of vegetables and seeds--where they come from, who they feed, and why each is important.

In honor of one of these harvest crops, the day's baking project was to prepare a pan of cornbread for the morning snack. We touched the cornmeal and learned how it was made, mixed in some fresh eggs from the farm and some other ingredients and popped it in the oven before heading out for the day's hike.

Today we would be hunting for seeds. We hiked out along the orchard path to a meadow at the edge of the woods. There the children discovered seeds hiding everywhere they looked. They searched in the tall grasses and unearthed the green cases of fallen black walnuts and sniffed at their strong scent when we cracked them open, revealing tiny white worms. They found plantain weed seeds, and apple seeds and, much to their delight, some pods of fairy-like milkweed seeds that were carried away by the wind. We talked about the way that seeds can travel--on the breeze, by sticking to animals' fur--to find a home and grow someplace else.

We returned to hear the tale of the three sisters and make some fabulous cedar-disk three sisters medallion necklaces. The caregivers took special interest in the craft today and all of the grown ups wanted to make their own bean, corn & squash mosaic jewelery!

After a read-aloud and some songs and rhymes about seeds, squirrels and harvest time, we headed back to the terrace to gobble cornbread and drink some cold cider. Much fun was had by all!

Halloween on the Farm

Today was the second in our Autumn series of Saturdays on the Farm in Fishkill and we spent the morning in the All Hallow's spirit. In keeping with the ancient Celtic tradition of wearing masks to discourage menacing ghosts from wreaking havoc on their households and next season's crops, the children painted and decorated their own
masks.
We had the very good fortune of dry weather despite the forecasted rain and were able to spend our morning out on the terrace crafting and baking. Those patient rain clouds also enabled us some solid adventure time around the farm grounds. Luckily everyone arrived today properly bundled and ready to be outside, which made for happy kids and parents all around.

After a frolic in the huge hay pile left over from September's hay maze, we hiked down to visit the chickens to collect eggs--always a treat for the kids--to use for my favorite autumn pumpkin muffins. We filled two baskets and spent some gleeful time among the farm's sweet old laying hens.

After some solid hand washing, the kids all took turns pouring and stirring ingredients. Thanks to a delightful mixing song taught to us by one of our little farmers, everyone passed the bowl around the table with the utmost fairness.

When the muffins were in the oven, we headed out to the meadow to read a story about old Baba Yaga the witch. We finished our meadow circle by stirring our brews to the tune of a creepy witch song before returning to the terrace to decorate our mostly-dry masks. With glitter glue and googly eyes (not very natural, but who can resist googly eyes?), beans and feathers, the children adorned their masks with enthusiasm and creativity. The pictures of their work speak for themselves.

We finished our day with a sweet Halloween story and pumpkin muffins, warm from the oven. Thanks to everyone for helping to create such a lovely morning on the farm!

Below is a slideshow showing some of Debbie Allan's photos of the mornings activities.