Noticing the Details

October 17th
For me, drawing has always been a meditative experience.  As a shy child, most of my 'choice' time in Kindergarten was spent at the painting easel.  My dad used to bring my brothers and I stacks of one-sided paper from work, and we would spend hours drawing together.  When I was a teenager, my mom pulled garbage bags of old drawings that I thought had long since disappeared out of our crawl space upstairs.  For me, drawing was a way of exploring my inner self.  It calmed me and allowed me to be quiet and reflective.

Obviously not all children feel the same way about drawing and painting, and many would rather dance, build structures or play soccer.  These days, I view drawing as a way for young children to communicate their ideas, when written language is still somewhat limited.  Currently, most of my students choose to draw in their sketch books during quiet time.  Some are beginning to play collaborative games on paper,  while others spend their time diligently working on observation drawings of the beach, shelves in the classroom or interesting objects from our Science corner.  We have been running an after-school club, and I lead an art class on Wednesdays.  Last week, I took the children outside with view-finders to draw alone in an outdoor space.  One little boy chose the plum tree to sit in, while others sat on the rocky beach and drew the islands in the distance.  Another lay in the grass and carefully drew a row of trees in magnificent detail.  One little girl discovered that she could use a leaf as carbon paper and another child worked on an observation drawing of all his friends.   The following week, we warmed up with free line drawings using graphite sticks.  I challenged the children to use only their fingers to draw with, then their wrists, elbows and whole arms.  Once they had warmed up, I took out mirrors and asked the kids to look closely at their faces.  I asked them to tell me what they noticed, and the answers ranged from the colour of their eyes, to the tiny pores on their cheeks.  One Kindergarten student spent a good portion of the afternoon drawing tiny pores in pencil, as well as a small scar that he noticed under his left eye.  Another chose to do a separate portrait of his body with a sword down the centre.  The energy that young children can achieve in their drawings is impressive, and it saddens me that this freedom often gets lost along the way as we begin striving for perfection.  For me, true beauty lies in odd angles, and bold strokes.  

Trip to the Salmon Hatchery

October 5th

I tried my hand at salmon fishing this summer and came home with enough coho and chinook to last the winter.  Catching the salmon was easy enough, but when it came to clubbing and gutting, I passed the job on to either the boat-owner or my seven year old friend, Roan.  Roan was born and raised on Haida Gwaii, and is accustomed to fishing, hunting and gathering food.  When there was a lot of blood, he was thoughtful enough to suggest that I look away, and when a near-dead salmon thrashed around inside the hatch, he gently told me that it was "just the nerves".  This week at school, we headed over to the Salmon Hatchery to learn about spawning.  Pat and Roger demonstrated how to catch and, sadly, kill the female salmon in order to take her eggs, and how to milk the males.  A few brave kids volunteered to club the salmon while others shielded their faces or watched with curiosity.  I tried to appear stoic, and ended up learning quite a lot about salmon.  I learned that it takes only ninety seconds for the eggs to become fertilized, and we watched the rejected sperm rise to the surface of the water.  I also learned that salmon spawned at the Hatchery have a ninety percent chance of survival, as opposed to in the wild where they only stand a ten percent chance.  When the eggs hatch, our school will be given a tank of salmon fry to look after over the winter, and I'm sure the children will have a clear understanding of where they came from.  When they are strong enough, we will release them into the wild to begin the cycle over again.  As I biked home from school, past the creek that is full of female salmon slowly dying, I realize that I am becoming more and more accustomed to living here, even though it can feel like a sensory overload at times. 

Kaleidoscopes and a Crow Funeral

September 30th

As the days grow shorter, and the rain continues to fall, a little sunshine is appreciated here on Haida Gwaii. Today was stunningly beautiful, and my walk to school began with a brilliant pink sunrise.  I knew that I wanted to take the children outside this afternoon, and we planned a beach walk and a trip to the library.  As the older students took their turn visiting the library, we finished making kaleidoscopes out of papier-mached toilet paper rolls, glitter, beads, and sheets of mylar.  To demonstrate how they work, I taped three mirrors together and placed them over a sparkly piece of plastic so that the kids could observe and document the repeated patterns they created.  They were mesmerized, and one of them exclaimed "It looks like a hundreds of rooms!" and also decided that the repetition of cubes and triangles reminded him of a city.  One little boy took the mirrored triangle over to a wall mirror and pressed his face against it.  Another boy began laying pencils inside the triangular prism and noted the patterns they created.  The kaleidoscopes turned out amazingly, and we figured out just how many pinches of beads and glitter to add to create the most interesting designs.  As we finished up, we went outside with sheets of construction paper and a variety of interesting objects, including scissors and pattern blocks.  We arranged them on the construction paper in the brightest patch of sunshine we could find and waited to see if the sun would bleach the paper.  I was unsure whether it would work, and thought that the wind might blow out papers away, but we were pretty excited to see the results happening very quickly.  As we waited, we grabbed buckets and walked down the beach  to collect crabs.  We have been talking about 'gentleness' and the children had to be reminded to be gentle with their crabby friends.  We returned them to their rocks and headed for the library where we spotted a dead crow on the side of the road.  

All of the kids stopped and stared with concern at the dead animal and began to wonder what had happened to it.  "Maybe it fell from the post", "Maybe it was a baby and it was trying to fly", "Maybe it was shot" were a few suggestions the children came up with.  The bird had a visible hole in it's side, but it was unclear what had happened to it.  As we looked up, we noticed a group of about ten crows sitting on the telephone wires overhead, and I told them about the mysterious crow funerals that I had read about.  We silently wished our friend well and headed off to the library followed by a visit to the park.  The kids have been very interested in butterflies and birds lately, so these topics will likely guide our research in the weeks to come.  Until next week!  xo

Invention time!

September 27th
"How we spend our days, is of course how we spend our lives."
-Annie Dillard

Trust can be a powerful thing when it comes to teaching children.  It can be challenging to give up a bit of control and allow your students to construct their own knowledge, particularly when you are a new teacher, and are unsure exactly how that might 'look' in action.  This week, I decided to jump in and go for it.  I set up a variety of centres, and provided my students with an afternoon to explore and create.  I spent most of the afternoon observing, questioning and initiating discussions while the children worked away in groups and independently.  One little boy in particular, is a very talented and creative builder and is constantly in some stage of planning a new invention.  Reading and writing have been frustrating tasks for him, and this year he has been waiting for a chance to demonstrate his true passions.  Today, I set up a 'Building Centre' with him in mind, that consisted of a giant bag of interesting items, a large tin of treasures, scissors, string and glue.  Three students teamed up and worked together on designing a ship with escape pods (made from kinder egg capsules and rubber string), and a styrofoam egg carton.  I listened in on a pretty heated discussion regarding how the escape pods would be attached, and our resident builder was not too pleased, but willing to compromise.  He was pretty convinced that they 'escapees' would be dragged under with the boat unless the pods were given enough slack and free from the inside of the boat.  "What if all these things are just sitting inside with no connection at all, then the lid on it will actually be buoyant and float right off so they can just float right out" he suggested.  His partner seemed a little more concerned with the aesthetics of the boat, and he eventually gave in and began planning his next creation.  A similar discussion ensued, when a five year old boy showed off his bamboo submarine with a floating gas tank to visually track the vessel from the shore.  "What if a plane drops a bomb on that and it would blow it up and it would burn down down down into the pipe and it would explode the motor?  It would make a fire inside and it would sink to the bottom" one student warned.  This initiated a debate about oil and water, and whether the water would put out the fire, which I sadly had to cut off so that we could finish up our day.  Another little boy presented a breathing tube that he had attached to a piece of foam that would float on the surface.  His clever invention would allow the diver to explore the ocean without an oxygen tank.  Another group of students worked on paintings, an experience that was particularly exciting for one little girl.  Every time she mixed two new colours together, she ran over to share her discoveries with me.  "I mixed pink and blue and it made purple!!"  "I mixed pink and yellow and it made orange!  I'm inventing colours!!"  We had worked on inventing new colours the week prior, and she was clearly proud to practice her new skill.  Our final painting 'critique' of the day warmed my heart.  All of the students stood around the easels, while the kindergarten students explained their thinking, and asked some very thoughtful questions.  Each child also expressed how "beautiful" both paintings were and how much they loved them.  I will continue to trust my students, by providing them with opportunities to develop their interests and share their talents with each other.  I can see so much potential in our classroom, and I am looking forward to next week.  Until then.  xo