Building our tribe
The past two weeks at Beautiful Beginnings I have really started to feel like our little vision of a ‘tribe’ has come together. I use the word tribe as it comes from the book Contiuum Concept which Clare and I have based our values for the group on. The vision is to build a group of parents and children to grow and learn with and support each other.
I realised we had reached this last week when Clare and the girls couldn’t make the group so I was to run it on my own. I was a little anxious and waking up that morning with just a whisper for a voice I thought ‘how am I going to sing our songs today!?’. When the dude and I arrived though I was happy to see Jane had kindly set up the toys for me. It was a small intimate group and we made skittles out of decorated plastic bottles with pasta to weigh them down and the songs weren’t a problem as everyone joined in (of course)!
One lovely mum Carolyn who has done a course in babywearing kindly brought her box of slings out of the car and we had a little chat about the different ways to carry little ones. She showed me how to carry Jude using a fabric sling even now he is 14 months and pretty solid, it was actually very comfortable!
At the end of the group we ended up sitting outside in the Settlements meditation circle singing our nursery rhymes. It was a beautiful day and we could have sat there enjoying nature, singing and chatting all day with the children,it was really peaceful. Ian and Mike kindly then helped me with the washing up before we left for the day while the kids happily played.
This week we had fun as we had quite a few regulars and most of the children were younger ones so it was nice to see lots of toddlers bumbling around together. There was play dough to squish and mould and a sensory table to pour lentils and other things from one pot to another, so much fun!
We also went out to the garden and planted some daffodil bulbs for the little ones to watch grow at home. They all had lots of fun digging the soil and patting it down, so cute to watch.
The next task is to make some gifts to sell in our Xmas stall to raise money for BB so our tribe can keep going. I’m currently sewing handmade teddies at home and we are making handmade appliqué books next week. It’s amazing how creative being a parent makes you. Each week the group makes me realise how the children just love to explore and be creative with the simplest things, it makes me question our society especially in the run up to Christmas. Do we need all the presents under the tree? …….
