On Monday I had a really fun Fall Meet and Greet and there were some sweet families! I still have enrollment available for the current school year in addition to camp and next school year. If you'd like to send someone my way, please have them check out www.outside.school and let them know my next Meet and Greets are on December 9, January 13, and February 10.

October in the park was fun and amazing!!! One really cool discovery was when we lifted a coast live oak leaf off the ground and discovered its imprint on the hard ground. We had already been talking about fossils and the relative ages of ground based on depth, and this was a neat discovery of a soft tissue imprint. It helps demonstrate how dinosaur skin impressions can potientially become fossilized.

A fly came to learn more about its own kind!

We see one just about every day!

Community Resource

I met up with Phil from the Bodin Group. Over the years I've taught so many children (and their families!) who would benefit from the counseling, mentoring, and other services offered by them. They're around to help in case of any sort of crisis, or to help prevent crisis in the first place. I'm grateful for the work they do. Here's a link to their website:

http://thebodingroup.com/

Musings

I heard years ago about how in Finland there is governmental support for all families where they give a box (itself also to be a bassinet) full of supplies for babies to all expectant mothers who received prenatal support. I thought about how wonderful it is for a government to help give care to expectant mothers and to welcome their new babies, and how that shows love and support for humans right from the start. I wish we were doing that in the US. Another tradition embraced by Scandinavians is putting infants and toddlers outside for their naps no matter the weather. How would our views toward families and neighborhoods change if we did the same? Linda Åkeson McGurk wrote about this in her last newsletter, which is a how-to on providing for baby naps outdoors in the cold:

http://rainorshinemamma.com/why-scandinavians-leave-their-babies-out-in-the-cold/

I was walking in a neighborhood shopping district before Halloween and there were flyers announcing that the street's shops would be handing out candy for trick-or-treaters. My initial thought was that it was sweet, but then I reflected upon what that represented. I became sad that trick-or-treating was being promoted by merchants (and the associated marketing involved with this promotion). And then I thought about how disintegrated our communities have become where people feel more comfortable bringing children into stores for their treats instead of going house-to-house in their own neighborhoods.

A huge reason I chose Alvarado Park for Outside School is that it is a part of my own neighborhood. I'd spent years commuting to Berkeley, but the five miles had turned into 45 minutes each way. Alvarado is a park that's one mile away from me, offers trees, grass, hikes, and a creek, and is still accessible to nearby communities via the freeway, San Pablo Avenue, The Arlington, and buses. Can't go wrong with all that!

I hope you all are well. Thank you for being a part of my community!

-Heather Taylor, NREMT