Ending Summer With A Bang

I suppose we all knew it finally had to come to this. The children of Woodland Park have learned to make bombs. Lord help us.

It started innocently enough. We've done it before after all, performing free-form experiments with various liquids (e.g., water, vinegar, corn syrup, vegetable oil) and powders (e.g., flour, baking soda, soap, corn starch).

We made various kinds of sticky dough and lots of fizzy eruptions. This would have been enough to keep Katherine and Lachlan's mom Kimberly, our parent-teacher in charge of the station, busy throughout the morning, but Sherry and Donna had recently posted about their experiments with skewers and re-sealable baggies so I thought I'd throw that idea into the mix as well. The basic concept is to fill the baggies with water, seal them, then pierce them with a skewer. If done just right, the skewer acts as a stopper, preventing the baggie from leaking as the children typically predict. My little twist was that I thought it would be interesting to try liquids of greater density like oil and corn syrup.

I hung out in the experimentation area for a bit, then once the kids had a nice mess going, I broke out the baggies and skewers and demonstrated. There was some interest and surprise, but even though we then made the materials available to the kids, I don't think any of them actually tried that particular experiment. There was some interest, however, in taking the pierced baggies of water and squeezing them in order to shoot streams of water across the table. Se la vie.

With things well under way, I wandered off to other stations, leaving the experimenters to Kimberly.

This final session of summer already had a smaller enrollment at 18 than the classes of 25-26 we ran with during most of the summer, and with a couple kids out sick and a couple more already headed off for long Labor Day camping trips and whatnot, it was a mellow day. There were a couple kids working clay at the art table, a couple using shovels to create a mound of wood chips, a few more in the garden helping Max's mom Callie clean up in preparation for fall, and one or two lazily enjoying their snack. There really wasn't much for me to do, no conflicts to mediate, no emotions to sooth, just a bunch of kids playing with a bunch of moms. A portrait of a cooperative preschool at it's best.

I was in the garden trying to catch more insects to feed to our burgeoning orb spider population, when Lachlan arrived on the scene bearing a sealed baggie that appeared stuffed with some kind of white substance. Upon closer inspection, it was apparent that he had managed to seal his bag around a baking soda and vinegar reaction that was causing the baggie to swell into a tight "pillow" as he called it. Suddenly, without warning, Boom! the seal gave way with a popping sound, spewing the bag's contents onto our just sprouted fall crop peas. Everyone was startled. Lachlan's eyes were wide in amazement.

Oh man, I thought, this is good. While Callie helped Ryan rinse the vinegar off of our sprouts with water from the rain barrel, Lachlan and I returned to the tinkering station with a story to tell and an experiment to try to recreate.

In my head was this vague memory from my own daughter's preschool days of having read about creating a time-release explosive device that involved wrapping a quantity of baking soda in several layers of paper towels, then dropping it into a baggie with vinegar. The idea is that the paper towels delay the chemical reaction long enough for you to seal the bag and move a distance away.

Back in the tinkering area we gave it a try.

We all stood back, watched the bag swell, then after a tension building period, burst open with a Pop! I resealed the bag and recreated the experience again . . .

. . . and again . . .

. . . and again . . .

. . . without adding any more ingredients.

Meanwhile, the children had lost interest in what Teacher Tom was doing, had grabbed their own baggies, and inexplicably had gathered around Kimberly on the ground beside the table to make their own bombs. No paper towel time release mechanism for them, however, instead they discovered that by adding Ivory Snow (a type of natural powdered soap) to their baggies first, the foaming action retarded the chemical reaction enough to give them time to seal their bags.

I'd purchased the inexpensive, store-label baggies. Most of them gave way at the seal, but many burst through the sides, and one resulted in a sudsy arc that Thomas immediately labeled a "geyser."

Before long most of the kids had been attracted by the popping and cheering and we had a veritable minefield in and around our sand pit.

What would happen if we buried one of our bombs in the sand?

The first time we tried it, nothing happened. We unearthed the baggie to find that it hadn't exploded, leading us to conclude that in the effort to slow down the reaction long enough to give us time to bury it, we hadn't added enough explosive material.

So we tried it again. This time with more material and more urgency.

We waited and waited and waited . . .

Well, let's just say we didn't get the sand-scattering explosion we'd hoped for. We did hear the "pop" and the sand did vibrate a bit, but it was an experiment worth attempting nevertheless.

This is why I teach.

The Pete Seeger Session

In my mind, these last two weeks of Woodland Park's summer program has been the "Pete Seeger session," although it would more accurately be described as the "American Folk session." Seeger is my touchstone because he recorded, and in many cases popularized, the songs. I also see him as an ally in my efforts to teach even young children the vital democratic trait of questioning authority.

I carry around many of these recordings on my iPod, most of which were performed before a live audience. Although to say that these classic songs are performed "before" an audience is a misnomer. Most of them are sing-alongs and what sends shivers down my spine is the sound of his audience singing with him, rising up in an amateur choir of voices that is the proper "instrument" for American folk music. Those co-mingled voices give power to the music that no soloist could ever match.

We started singing "Little Boxes" a few months back, which the children have now made their own. I love this simple anthem to individuality.



(Last week, Sena's mom Ann wrote me to say that while helping to set the table, she placed a glass of water in front of her sister and said, "Here's your martinis dry." They don't always learn the lesson you intend for them, but I still expect that Sena will never let someone put her in a little box.)

To this song we added "This Land Is Your Land," Woody Guthrie's response to "God Bless America." I recall singing this song in first grade, and apparently it's still being sung in our public schools because two of our summer session kids who are entering first grade excitedly told us they already knew it from kindergarten. I love the powerful declaration of ownership and democracy found in this song and singing it together is the only way it sounds right.



I choked up a couple of times these last two weeks, as the moms and dads and kids sang it together. We then followed it up each time by breaking out out classroom map of the US and finding things like California, the New York Islands, the red wood forests, and the Gulf Stream Waters. Children then started spontaneously raising their hands to tell us of places they have been so we could find them on the map as well.

We sang the "edited" version in class, omitting two of the verses, just as Arlo and Pete did in this video. Going forward, I plan to include them.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said, "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

And

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city. In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

We also sang "If I Had A Hammer" using rhythm sticks as a hammers and jingle bells as our bells. We loved using our hammer of justice to hammer out danger, and we loved using our bells of freedom to ring out warning.



If I have a disappointment about this final two week session of summer with the older kids it is that it was too short. I had so many other songs to teach them, but 3 new ones seemed about right. I had "Turn, Turn, Turn," "We Shall Overcome," and "Waist Deep In The Big Muddy" in my back pocket, but never broke them out. I guess I'll find those still there when we're ready for them during the regular school year.

The Destiny Of All Things Made By The Hand Of Man

I'd never heard of acrylic paint pens until Juliet from I'm A Teacher, Get Me OUTSIDE Here! mentioned using them to create painted stones. Apparently, they're quite well-known among crafters and skateboarders (they're used to embellish boards), but not coming at teaching preschool from either of those sides of things, the fact of their existence completely eluded me until now.

Over the past several months we've acquired a nice collection of stones, terra cotta, and seashells, all of which seemed like likely candidates for adding a little color to our outdoor space. The beauty of these paint pens, of course, is that they promise to hold their brilliant color even in the weather. 

We piled the materials in the middle of our art table, warned the kids that the paint from these pens would permanently stain their clothing (although Woodland Park parents already know to dress their kids for this eventuality), and let them go.

Drawing on these textured and varied surfaces takes concentration and experimentation. As an artist myself, I know that one tends to become intimate with one's materials, gaining a kind of knowledge of them that might seen quite narrow in the moment, but often returns to serve you when you least expect it.

I'm noticing in my photos, that even children who have already learned to hold pens and markers in the usual way, seem to have reverted to more crude grips when using these pens. I wondered if they would just think they were using fancy markers, but this tells me that they know they have something different in their hands.

For one thing, the nibs retract into the pen with pressure (this is how they release the paint) unlike markers, which gives them a different feel. The children who are accustomed to mashing their drawing implements into their paper and scribbling vigorously had to learn a new technique with these pens, one that seemed to slow them down a bit. A deliberate hand is rewarded with this art tool.

We encouraged the children to take their artwork immediately outdoors and choose a spot for it.

Some of the girls took theirs into the garden and placed them beside their "favorite" plants.

This is a fun use for old Chia Pet vases.

These works of art will, of course, not stay where we've placed them. They'll move about the outdoor classroom becoming part of our play, then disappearing for a time, only to reappear as treasures in another game. Despite the promise of the acrylic paint, designed as the pen's say on their labels, "for Garden crafts, they will fade with time, ultimately becoming nothing but ghosts, which is the destiny of all things made by the hand of man.

They Went Home Tired

I've written before about how and why we wrestle at Woodland Park, so I won't go into the details, but rather share our wrestling experience from yesterday.

A few of the boys had been turning our "lounge" area into a place for rough housing. I don't usually mind a low level of that kind of play, but since it was reaching the point that less rambunctious kids were being driven from the area, I needed to tamp it down. When I broke it up last Thursday, they asked if we could wrestle. It was near the end of the day, so I had to tell them it would have to wait until this week. I shouldn't be surprised that they were craving a little full-body contact. One of the downsides of the 2-6 year-old-age range that has characterized most of our summer is that wrestling is out of the question given the dramatic body size differences between the kids. We tried one brief wrestling experiment earlier this summer with 2-year-olds involved and while a couple of them -- those with older siblings -- managed themselves well, others were just hurt and confused. This final session of summer, however, is a 3-6 group, skewed heavily toward the older end.

We rolled out the mats, dividing the room as I've learned to do into the "wrestling" and "tumbling" areas, because not everyone craves this kind of physical contact, but they still want to play on the mats.

In my last post about wrestling I focused on the physical and social aspects of the activity, but yesterday as I refereed, I found myself thinking more about the emotional aspects.

I reminded the kids, as I always do, "If you're hurt or crying, you can come sit on the bench until you're not hurt or crying any more."

"Wrestling isn't fighting. If you feel angry or if I think you look angry, I want you to sit on the bench until you don't look or feel angry any longer."

A couple kids took injury breaks, but got right back at it moments later. Wrestling is too much fun to be hurt for long.

We had two boys take crying breaks, one because he bumped heads with a friend (the most common wrestling owie by far) and the other because he was mad. He sat on the bench and shouted at the boy who had done whatever it was to anger him, "Stoooooooooop!" The offending party had no idea that the shout was meant for him, but the impromptu scream therapy worked its magic anyway and seconds later everyone was back on the mats.

One of the hardest of our wrestling rules to remember in the heat of the fray is to keep your hands away from the faces and necks of the other people. I only had to issue a couple reminders yesterday.

The other rule (which was necessitated years ago by Willie, who was taking Aikido classes and really knew how to do "throws") that is usually hard to remember is that if you are knocking someone else down, you have to fall with them. It's hard even to describe, but it really means you can't just run around pushing or throwing your friends down. I didn't have to remind anyone about that as shouts of, "Take down!" filled the room.

It was a blur of bodies as you can tell from these photos, which really demonstrate the weakness of relying on a camera phone.

They went home tired.