Curriculum Work
Firstly, I am working on a long-term project with the whole of Madison Elementary School - preschool through 5. Urban Foresters is going to cut down a few trees that are dying in the front of the school, and will donate new trees to be planted. Each grade will choose one of three trees to plant and care for, and there will be activities relating to the trees and their growth year round. I am helping to coordinate the plantings, and will be helping to come up with various related activities as the year goes by.
Meanwhile...I am working with the 2 first grade classes. In one of them, I mostly help with one-on-one reading.
In the other, at the suggestion of the teacher, knowing my interests, we are beginning a Nature Journal. I will be bringing in different objects from nature for them to draw, and we will watch the progression of their eye for detail throughout the year. These are 6 and 7year olds, so it will be somewhat simple. Miss Whitcraft and I stapled together booklets of 8.5x11 paper which we cut in half. In honour of my work on the Painted Word project, I began by having them each do their name page, which will be the front page of their books. All the children have already drawn on and madly glittered this first page.
Next, I suggested that we take the children on a nature walk around the neighborhood: to give them context;to fill them with inspiration; and to have them gather some of their own objects. (The plan was for this thursday, but it rained). While I don't know much about the kinds of plants we'll find, I do know a bit, and I have a pretty good magickal connection to the little details, like mushrooms peeping up through decaying leaves, little fairie flowers here and there, rocks, pine cones, and of course all the gorgeous leaves still blowing around, and I want to keep the children connected to their own sense of that magick. I think it will really help later when we are sitting around a table with disconnected objects from outside. I've already taken a nice little pile of pretty goodies with me everyday that I've gone to the school, just for them to see it there. I might start wearing things made of plants in my hair, or on my clothes, and/or making little things like artwork, nothing extravagent, just something simple, but natural, and hopefully intriguing.
I plan to learn as much as I can about basic stuff like leaves, and acorns, and trees, so that I can teach them whatever I know while they are drawing. But right now, my strenth is in my somehow intact wonderment, and my artistic sense of the beauty around me, and I hope to impart at least that. I also hope to allow them a sense of autonomy over their own product, i.e. Their Book. Over the course of time, I will suggest little side projects, like making collages with leaves, etc. - something a bit more tactile - so the children can think about creative uses of natural objects, not just drawing them.
