Artasia at St. James

At Heritage Green the kinders and prekinders were very excited when I arrived for programming, they all hurried to finish their snacks and get ready for the activity. As we got into the activity I noticed when they called for my help instead of saying my name they would call out “Artasia!” just like when I arrived they got excited and said “Artasia is here!” I found this to be very funny and sweet how they associated me as a person with the entire program itself, as if I was the program and not just one of the many people who participated in making the program come to life. I think this is important because it shows how the children interpret and think about the people who come into their spaces and give them activities to do. They see our time together on their schedule marked as artasia so thats how they know me, but even then the longer we spend time together the more kids come up to me to ask me what my name actually is, showing the process of going from thinking of me as a program to as a person separate from the activities I bring for them. We spent some of the time getting to know my name, they were very interested in the way it’s spelt because they thought it was cool that there was a W that was silent at the beginning. I invited them to ask whatever questions about me that they wanted and they asked what it meant and even why it was my name. This line of questioning turned into why I have freckles or why is my hair darker at the top and lighter at the bottom. We learned roughly about genetics and how some people have freckles because of where their parents are from, and hair dye and what it does through this side quest that they had. It was so amazing to see how they could hop from one idea/question to the next and where their imagination takes them when they are interested in something.

– Wren Breeze