I would love a tipi; it’s one of my long term dreams to live in the mountains in a tipi, as my hunter and gatherer ancestors did and live simply off the land. Modern life has me distracted by the lure of computers and running water, but deep inside, I long for this simplicity.

Tuesday of this week, my daycare clan and I cut down a few pine trees as we began clearing a small nature path through the forest. Today we used these trees to build us a tipi- of sorts.

Five small pine trees are tied together at the top and the rope is woven under and over the pine trees and all the way around the circle about 5 times- just so it’s secure. We then took the rope and wrapped it around the middle of the trees (looping around each trunk) till we had an almost complete circle, but left space for a door.

Then, we got our biggest “outside” blankets, hung them from the rope and tucked them around the tree trunks.

I took the left-over branches and hung them from the top of the tipi- which the kids loved.

Here’s a picture of our fort! They played in and out of it for a while this morning. (Now they are all tuckered out and sleeping!)

Just another way to get children excited to play outside. It’s also possible to take sticks and branches and weave them in and out around the base to make a tipi stick fort (a very involved project and probably more appropriate for ages 4/5 and up)!

Check back later to see the changes to our playroom!

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