I am so thankful for community! This past weekend many families were able to attend the grand opening of Dancing Sol. We got to all spend time together, have our children play together, hike around the Wee Wilderness, and have that great connecting time that is so important in maintaining a healthy & vibrant family. Thank you all who were able to come, and to all those who were not, we look forward to being with you soon!

In editing our Parent’s Handbook to Dancing Sol, we revisited our vision statement. We wanted to really make sure it fully expressed our desire for this world. The message is really still the same, but now the words resonate perfectly with our intentions in life.

All children experience themselves as part of nature and grow to become compassionate and peaceful stewards of the earth.

What do you think? Can you envision a world where this is just the way it is?

Wednesday, September 3rd will be the first day of class! I know that we’re not the only ones excited! Several parents have emailed sharing with us the excitement their kids have for coming to school. One mom said her daughter talks about “my little school” every day. Gosh, kids are so awesome!

So, either you’ve enrolled your child in Dancing Sol, or are at least here following along with the story. GREAT! Welcome! We have a treat for you: I have redesigned the monthly ads in the Oregon Family newspaper to include an outdoor activity you can do with you kids! Beginning with the September issue, you will learn one activity a month to do together. (Collect them all!) Please write us with your, and your child’s, experiences! We’d love to hear about them!

The activities I’ll be introducing each month are ones that can be done in the deep woods of the country, or just in your own backyard, no matter where you live. Nature is all around, and we needn’t step further than our own yard to be able to connect with the richness of nature that is all around us and that we are all a part of. Our home is in the city, and we’re close enough to the south edge of town that we have families of deer strolling by every day. Two days ago we had our back gate open while completing some work, and went inside for a bite to eat. When we looked out our balcony, guess who we found having their own bite? I’m not sure you can see it, but the little one still has spots!

Hoping our trails cross soon,
Rees Maxwell

Our Grand Opening of Dancing Sol is on Sunday August 24th from 2-4 (I had an incorrect date earlier posted on this site). You’ll be seeing reminders about it on flyers around town, as well as in our Oregon Family ad and Eugene Weekly ad.

We have been gone for a couple of weeks … first I went hiking with two of my brothers along the Oregon Coast (it was incredible!), and then my family drove out to Yellowstone for a family reunion. While there we saw elk, eagles, bison, moose, … all the usual suspects. I had forgotten just how huge that park is! If you have not ever been, well, put it on your list. The bubbling mud pots are really fun, as are the plethora of geisers and such. Ah, and all of those adventures were sweetened with the addition of family.

(While we were away our email went down for a bit. I appologize for that. If you sent messages to us and we haven’t yet responded, it is probably because the emial was lost. Please resend your message and we’ll get right back with ya.)

Now that we’re back, we’re scampering around preparing for our fall program to begin. We’re making runs to Jerry’s and Lane Forest Products in order to get our landscaping and playset all in order. Everything we do has and will be inspected by the state daycare and preschool certifiers, so extra caution is being taken to ensure a safe as well as fun environment for the children who will frolic around Dancing Sol.

Do you have an extra few hours that you weren’t sure what to do with? We’d love your hand assisting us in getting prepared for the fall year to begin (and it’ll begin very soon now). We might be doing something glorious like restoration work in the Wee WIlderness with Cynthia from Doak Creek Native Plant Nursery, or maybe something more domestic like painting the classroom bathroom with zero VOC eco-paint… who knows. Please give us a call and find out if we’re doing anything fun the day you have free, and you’ll be welcomed into our ‘behind-the-scenes’ goings on.

Till next time, have fun out there!
Rees Maxwell

My my, we’ve just finished our third week of summer nature camps, which means that next week will be our last camps of the summer! This is all happening so fast! What an incredible time we’ve had with the kids, with nature. It is such a wonderful experience to be out in the same area of nature every day, week after week. We noticed wildflowers budding and blooming, found a spot in the woods where some Swainson’s Thrush live, discovered that a couple of local deer love to visit our morning “story grove” during the time we’re out on the trail, and have been quite grateful for the huge temperature difference the trees offer over the open field where we begin and end each day.

One of the really inspiring days of last week was when we came across a couple of animal vertebra, and then on a following day we returned to dig around until we uncovered a huge cache of bones. We pulled out quite a few, and then began to piece the skeleton back together. I brought out a book that detailed bones of various animals, and after matching the bones we found up with the drawings in the book, the kids decided we’d found the bones of a deer. We had many questions: Why did the deer die, How long had it been there, How old was it when it died? We found the lower jaws, and from them could see that the teeth were still quite sharp .. which told us that the animal must have been still young when it died. We also found two individual sharp shark-looking teeth that were not attached to the jaw bones .. which made some of the kids think that those must have been left by the animal that killed it .. until we discovered that those ‘teeth’ were actually the bones that are normally surrounded by the deer hoofs! Ahh, so many learnings here, and so many mysteries left unanswered.

Matty and I are excited by all of the really positive, and powerful, feedback we’ve been getting from the parents. Our fall preschool continues to attract interested familes, and for that we are grateful. You see, I’m also an inventor … often coming up with new ideas that I think are great. But many times when I put those ideas out to the public I discover that they are only great in my mind. It takes a lot of energy to create something from scratch, and it is so great to discover that our community feels what we’re offering is a good thing.

I’ll get some pictures from this next week’s nature camps and post them on this blog. Drop on by toward the end of the week! (And then we’ll be gone for two weeks as I head out to the Oregon Coast for 4 days of hiking with my brothers, and then my family packs up to drive out to Yellowstone for a family reunion, and then up to Missoula, Montana for a wedding, and then a leasurely drive back to Eugene where we’ll be finishing up the last things we need to do before our Grand Opening Sunday August 24th!) Whew!

Somehow I managed to delete all of the previous blog entries. So, until I manage to recreate them, just imagine that there were some great inspiring stories about our open house, the road to Dancing Sol, and the beginning of our summer camps.

This week my son Aiden turns 6, and we begin our third week of summer camps. It has been an incredible experience thus far! We’ve received some really fantastic feedback from parents as well.

One told about her son who, after a great day at camp, went home and took a nap, then got up asking his family to go on a hike that evening. They went out with him leading the family, pointing out hazards, and asking for quietness on their walk so that he could hear the various bird language voices the birds were using, which he then described to the parents what they meant!

We’re excited to see what we discover this week in the woods!

See you on the trail,
Rees Maxwell

We had an incredible week in the woods, ending a day early so that families could enjoy the Forth of July together.

We found many mysteries out there on the Ridgeline Trail this past week, including some mysterious bones, little white feathers up in the hollow of an ancient oak, many trails and other signs of animals enjoying the area. One day we were sitting quietly (as quiet as 4-6 year olds can be) underneath an incense cedar, and a beautiful Towhee landed up above us and made a beautiful call. Ooo, there are a lot of birds out there, calling and singing. Such a beautiful place filled with mysteries.

If you are one of the folks who were able to register your child in our summer camps before they filled, we are excited to meet your child! If you were not able to get in this year, we hope we can extend our number of weeks of summer camps next year.

And don’t forget, we offer a nature-based early childhood curriculum all year long for 3-5 year olds, and we still have available spaces! Give us a call so we can get together with you, meet your child, and see if our curriculum is a good match for what you are wishing for your child.

We hope to see you on the trail!