Project Reflections
| Date | Place | Reflections |
| 10-1-05 | Organic Farm | It was exciting to see all of the community involvement in the Harvest Festival. There were many excited children and parents enjoying the food and events. My job was carving the goop out of the pumpkins in order for them to be ready for the kids to carve faces. I found that the majority of the kids thoght that the best part of carving was getting their hands dirty by taking the orange goop out. |
| 10-9-05 | Merilee's Garden | Today was our first meeting. She has such a warm home that everyone flocks to, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. We discussed what she wants to do with her garden including possible new plants, ideas for stepping stones, and free resources. Her husband came in with a bag full of farm fresh eggs that he had dropped in the driveway and were all cracked. Merillee said that the only thing to do was to make omlettes, so she did for all of us. I have a feeling this will be a very fun garden project. It feels like home already, full of Merillee's and her husband's art and good people coming in and out. |
| 10-16-05 | Merillee's Garden | We transplanted huckleberry bushes today that Merillee's husband, Pete brought from a friend's yard. It was a big job. They had brought a back hoe in and dug holes for us before we got there, which was very helpful. We worked together. One of us would hold the huckleberry plant upright in the hole and make sure none of it's delicate roots were crushed while the other person shoveled in the soli around it. It was raining so this was a very messy and muddy job. I got the dirtiest and everyone was laughing at me so I decided to just ly in the mud. It felt so good to be sinking into mother earth. She was cold and soothing. |
| 10-19-05 | Eastside Coop School | I talked with Annie about what we wanted from my interaction with her classroom. She welcomed help and said that the children would probably not let me just observe. They would want to interact. We arranged for a time for me to come to the classroom when it is structured free time with different activities going on that I can participate in. |
| 10-23-05 | Merillee's garden | Today was rainy again. We began the enormous tak of weeding the entire garden. We broke up the earth over and over again. It was very satisfying to see what we had done with 4 people working. I didn't feel very well by the end so I went inside and discovered the world of art in Pete and Merillee's house. It is incredible! They have wooden carved and painted maks and paddles by Pete, expressive clay masks done by Merillee hanging on the wall, and a huge collection of baskets from over the years. |
| 10-27-05 | Eastside Co-op School | What an exciting preschool! There are many small spaces for children to climb into and under, which they love! Everything is their size, the tables and chairs, sink, bookshelves. The children were very good at sharing toys and being polite, which was probably the influence of the parents and teacher. It was a great environment to socialize the children. In the one room preschool house there were many different tables with objects to stimulate their senses, mostly touch and sight. I was in a classroom composed of three and four year olds. They come a few times a week for three hours at a time. The program does a good job of balancing out structured and unsructured time, and interspersing it. When we were outside, Annie, their teacher was telling me about how many of the toys are designed so the children will play together instead of just by themselves. Age 4 is when children really start to be able to play together. There was a red wagon with a long rope with thirteen knotts on it so the children could pull together. I observed the children working together to clean out the playhouse. They moved all of the furniture out. Two of them were sweeping out the sand. Emily, the girl that I nanny for, was scaping the sand off the windowsill with a spoon. I was amazed to see 4-year-olds working so adamantly together on this project that they had come up with themselves. |
| 10-30-05 | Merillee's Garden | Merrillee had a fresh pot of chicken noodle soup on the stove when we arrived. She fed us and then we went out into the cold rain to work. I had sandles on. I don't know what I was thinking. I weeded for a little while and then got designated to place all of Merillee's miscelaneous potted plants that were donated to her, and plant them. This was quite the task to figure out where to plant 20-30 plants, some of which I didn't even know what they were. I tried to put most of the herbs together and then placed the others according to how tall wide they would become, putting the taller ones in the middle or on the side to block the view to the neighbors yard. I planted them all with Rebecca, Jenee, and Ryan's help. Ryan, Jenee's son helped weed and played some hide and go seek and splashed in some puddles. |
| 11-17-05 | Eastside Coop School | Today I carried out my curriculum. I had no idea how it would go, but it went amazingly well. I got great feed back form the teacher as well as the parents. The children loved learning “The River is flowing”. Teacher Annie wants the lyrics. The children loved the walk in the woods. They listened to most of what I had to say. They even hugged the tree when I told them to. The children loved collecting things for their mobiles. We did not have string to tie things on with so we used pipe cleaners. These turned out to be better because the children could do it themselves. They got very creative with their mobiles. Some hung live leaves and some hung leaves that we precut out of construction paper. They loved wrapping the pinecones with pipe cleaners. William made a very colorful stick sculpture with probably 20 pipe cleaners and a couple of pinecones. |
