By Carrie Komesch, Educator
ckomesch@childnature.ca
Today some of our preschoolers made maps inside the cabin, and then took turns leading other students and educators to the destinations marked on their respective documents.
One student identified his map as showing the way to “the [chipmunk] hole” that he had spotted on the forest pathway on his walk in that morning. We admired the cleanly bored hole and left some sunflower seeds nearby.
Another student explained that her map led to a “snow play,” with a variety of destinations along the way. She led us down a hill and into the trees, saying, “Now it says to go over here…and now we are going to the beach, and that is over here…and now we’re going to the place with a lot of birds but it’s really far away so we have to take an airplane.”
At the beach, we had a hot chocolate break, naturally.
We then constructed a sand castle out of snow that subsequently turned into a snowman for which we had to find an acceptable nose. When it was time to move on, one student offered to pilot our airplane to the place with the birds (referring to her own map as necessary) while another child followed behind us in his helicopter.
Our students also demonstrated their usual insatiable appetite for books, as you can see from the pile of requests they bestowed upon Jen during storytime!
Another beautiful day in the forest!