Good finds and good times...

Yesterday being a Friday was also Park Day. We hung out under the trees, and in the sand, on the swings, and on the giant dirt pile next to the new-still-under-construction playground. Before going, we quickly stopped at the Dollar Store to pick up a gift bag for the presents we had gotten for another girl. Whiel at the Dollar Store, we found these....

So you can imagine what the kids did the minute we got home! We spread out clean trah bags at the kitchen table, and off to work they went. After an hour or so, each had a tiny dinosaur fossil in 7 pieces, which they glued together (with some help from their dad) and then glued to tiny stands. Elf had a Parasaurolophus and Fairy got a Dilophosaurus. I printed out a couple of info/coloring pages too. The kids are thinking they might want to try making dinosaur lapbooks!

Then today we headed out to Point Reyes National Seashore for the annual Big Time Festival. We watched dancing...

And we checked out some crafts. We watched basket weaving, but unfortunately missed the flint knapping demonstration. While there was plenty of stuff for sale too, the kids decided to make their own souvenirs. They each made two necklaces - one with a mussel shell in which they drilled the holes themselves using a tool like this one, the other being simple beading with polished rocks, silver and turquise beads, wooden beads, shell pieces, etc.

They also tried out bullroarers and played stick games. We felt animal pelts, and admired arrowheads carefully chipped from obsidian. And in that nice way the universe sometimes works, when we got home a little while ago, we found The Real Book About Indians waiting on our doorstep!

So Fairy's fascination with Native Americans is firmly rooted, and now blossoming in Elf as well. We estimate their Native American heritage at about ten percent, which means that learning about the past directly connects to them, something both seem to get a kick out of!