#Earthschooling365: Day One Hundred
Inner Work Meditation (Heart): Taking candid photos of the fawn today I was struck by how innocent and curious her wide eyes were. She seemed amazed by everything in the world. Each sound, taste and sight seemed to please her. She is definitely fortunate to be born as an urban fawn. She lives in an area where there is no hunting, plenty of places to hide where people never walk, and plenty of food to keep her mother healthy and providing her with rich milk. Today’s meditation is to put yourself in the place of the fawn. Imagine that the place you are sitting in now is completely safe and all your needs are taken care of. Imagine that every sight, sound and smell around you is new and fantastic. It make take a while to enter into this imaginary realm. Once you are “there” stay there for at least five minutes. How do you feel? Does anything around you look different now? What emotions did this mediation evoke?
Nature Walk Idea (Head): Today’s nature walk project is to create a “nature song”. Remember or write down at least three different sounds you hear today on your nature walk. When you return home create a chant or song from these sounds. A chant would be using the sounds to create a verse. A song would be putting the sounds to music. One example could be the following: Who-who-who-who! Humpf Humpf! Crrrrrick! Criiiiick! If you are working with children that are in second grade and above you can divide your group into two and have one group start the “song”. Have the second group come in after he first 3 syllables and recite the verse as a round. Another way to recite the verse would be to divide your group into three and have the first group start saying their sound in a rhythmic manner over and over. After a couple recitations have the second group come in with the second sound, recited in a rhythmic manner. Finally, have the third group come in. This creates a natural “song”.
Photography Notes (Hands): Today we will talk a bit about focus again. However, today’s assignment will be a bit more challenging than our other focus assignments. In the photos I took of the fawn today I had to be very careful about where I focused the picture or where the camera was focusing because the fawn was sitting among many plants. In any of these photos the automatic focus would usually go to one of the plants in the foreground. In such cases you have a few different choices in how you will deal with this problem. You first option is to switch your camera to manual focus and focus on the fawn manually. Your second choice is to set your camera to spot-focus (see your instruction manual) and make sure the small square in the viewfinder is positioned over the fawn. The third choice is to leave your camera on balance-focus (the default setting for most cameras set to auto mode) and make sure that the focus area contains mostly pieces of the fawn. Your assignment today is to take a photo of a person, animal or object hidden behind a tree, a bush, leaves or grass and practice focusing on your subject.
Verse: Safe
Copyright Kristie Burns
Nestled in the grass
Embraced by Ni’hoosdzáán
Cricket lullabies
*Haiku: A Japanese verse form of three unrhyming lines in five, seven, and five syllables
**Ni’hoosdzáán; Navajo word: ni’ = ground; hoosdzáán = derivative of female, woman (asdzáán); female ground; Earth.
These poems have been created for many purposes – from early childhood circle time verses to inspirational or expressive. They vary from day to day so you may find the way you use them or enjoy them also varies. If you would like to set these poems to music consider our tutorial: Creating Your Ow Waldorf Verses or Finding Your Inner Voice.
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What is #Earthschooling365?
This series takes you through an entire year of our nature walks and is part of our non-profit project #Earthschooling365 at www.Earthschooling.org. The photos and posts in this series are all copyrighted. Please do not share or re-print them. Instead, share the link to this blog with your friends.
Along the way I will be sharing our favorite photo of the day, an inner work meditation for the day, photography assignment/tip for the day, nature walk theme for the day and a short verse for circle time (children) or meditation (teens/adults). We invite you to “walk along with us” this year, take some time to use the inner work meditation, be inspired by the nature walk theme of the day and perhaps even start a photo series of your own. To join the community on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram please tag your photos #Earthschooling365. To receive these inspirations in your e-mail inbox daily please subscribe to our blog alerts HERE. Don’t worry about missing days – you can join us as many days as you want this year!
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