When delivering projects to the Kindergarteners at HWCCCC St. Bernadette, each week was an explosion of curiosity from the kids throughout all the types of programming I provided. The children here were particularly excited and spontaneous, which led to varying degrees of unique artwork targeting each of our 5 senses.
In week 2 of program delivery, we were exploring our sense of smell through a collaborative ‘smell map’ where the class made labels of certain smells and stuck them to the areas on the map where they may find those particular smells. During this week we experienced the swath of wildfire smoke from Northern Ontario altering our air quality, and before I could even set up my supplies for my day with this group I was dragged to the window by the kids and asked many, many questions about what was happening outside. “Where is the sun? Why can’t we go outside? What on earth is that smell?!” Thankfully we were able to answer one of those questions with our map project, with very predictable results as kids created many fire/smoke labels and pasted them very densely around their school. While we were drawing together, lots of questions and conversations were being thrown at me about the fires (I wish I could’ve answered them all) and some kids ended up drawing their own homes, pets and wildlife on their own personal maps in appreciation of their safety among the current environmental crisis.
For week 5, the sense that we explored is our important sixth sense: Imagination! The project at hand was simple as the kids were given photographs of different parts of the city of Dundas to draw on and add things that they think would improve the area around them. Two boys had gotten the same image, and ended up altering them differently but with a theme; they turned a park into a swimming pool and into a beach! They both really wanted to go out swimming but had their own preferences as to where of course. Alternatively, another kid decided that he wanted his park to be swamped with lava since the heat was sweltering outside. It was incredibly interesting seeing the individuality between their cityscapes heavily influenced by their rapid thoughts and emotions.
Working with the children at HWCCCC was a rewarding challenge since every week felt completely different in the sense that I could never predict how invested the kids would be in our projects, and when they were they blew my expectations out of the water with the artwork they curated for themselves. Thank you to the lovely ECEs who help nourish their excitement and creative wild side to the fullest.