Wild Child School 1 Week 5: Water Water Everywhere!

This fall has been spectacular, for the most part. The weather from September through October has been mostly sunny with cloudy periods with only one or two days of rain that kept us inside, but this week the rain came down. Rain caused severe flooding over the past weekend and another deluge midweek made it a fitting week for us to focus on water.

Water is an incredible substance. Covering most of the earth’s surface in liquid and solid form, its gaseous phase is a component of the air that we breathe. Every single living thing on earth relies on water. It carries nutrients into our bodies and carries waste out because of its fantastic ability to have stuff dissolve into it. Water has the extraordinary ability to refresh and renew itself through the cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.

Whatever water lands on, moves though, runs over, drips off, and is stored in has a lot to do with how clean it is and what sorts of things can live in it. Keeping our environment clean to prevent pollution from getting into this resource that all life depends is very important.

This week we did a simple craft that I wish we had more time to work on before the sun fell below the horizon. (It really is late November already!) We went for a walk and collected some twigs that were straight and about two centimetres in diameter. We broke them into pieces roughly the same length. By the time we got to the stream we were ready to begin making our rafts. One partner held the sticks side by side while the other partner used some jute twine to wrap around the ends of each stick and then tied it off. The other partner then held the sticks as the other partner secured the other end of the raft with some twine.

This required a bit of coordination and assistance with the group, but once their rafts were put together, I encouraged them to add leaves, feathers, twigs, and anything else to personalize their own rafts while I helped other put theirs together. The entire construction will decompose over time and have a minimal impact on the environment.

The object of this was to connect the children with water and send a piece of their own creativity out into the world, similar to some of the work that Andy Goldsworthy has done. We don’t know where they will go or what will happen to them, but a piece of us is our creativity is out there in the world, perhaps still making its way out into the ocean.