The young students in my care are full of personality, curiosity, energy and imagination.  Many of them (if not all) are young scientists and explorers already.  The challenge is harnessing their energy, holding their attention and inspiring them with what I have to offer.

From September to December, I taught science as a focused, hands-on lesson of a concept such as colour or habitat, read books on those relevant themes, and offered a science choice during our centre time.  I believe that this is a relatively common approach to science in primary.  The children showed interest during our science times and some visited the science centre choice, but I just wasn’t capturing the energy and interest that I witnessed on a regular basis during unstructured playtime.  Puddles, forts, dirt, lego, cars, poop, outer space, worms, spiders…my young students study, test and discuss these kinds of topics with gusto, and not necessarily when it is convenient for teacher.

So…I knew that I needed a science playtime.  During the month of January, I gathered a whack of materials, books and ideas on the following topics:

• human body
• nature
• forces and motion
• water
• magnetism

I chose these area because I felt confident that I could gather up a sufficient amount of relevant stuff to play with.  I first thought that I would create a series of activity cards to go with each station and pictured myself using a handful of parents or older students to help lead the activities.  However, this means complicated scheduling.  It also means heavily structuring the play that occurs, which of course means that it is not true play.  In the end, I designed each station with a natural and obvious play focus.  I just set them up and let the kids loose!

So far, my children love science playtime.  It was so much fun unveiling the centres for the first time.  So many new things to explore and  do!  My task now is to maintain enthusiasm and to make the children aware of their scientific behaviour so that they might play with purpose.  I am going to write a series of posts on each station both to help me reflect on what I am doing and to help anyone else who might want to set up their own science centres.

So…there you have it.  A first step back into blogging.

After a couple of weeks, some my students are just as interested in our aquarium habitat as the day we first filled it with dirt and leaves.

The trick is to put it on a table along with a selection of tweezers, magnifying glasses, paper towels, empty buckets and a spray bottle filled with fresh water.  Even with nothing visible crawling around, you’ll end up with a crew that digs around, takes out samples, rearranges everything and gives it all a good spray to keep it moist.

Our inhabitants are currently a selection of woodlice, a big beetle (whom we haven’t seen for a while…not sure if it is even in there anymore!), an ant and an earwig.  We found all of these critters while checking out the underside of rocks just outside our classroom.  We keep adding to it all of the time.  It is so simple, low-maintenance and gives us a good excuse to get outside and do a little micro-exploring.

By the way, I finally feel like I am (almost) past the complete focus on behaviour to the exclusion of all else in the classroom!  Woohoo!  We even tried our first big field trip (out to a dairy farm and pumpkin patch) and everyone stayed safe, listened for my voice, and had a great time.  The key is having lots of stuff to do and to touch.  Oh ya…and to spend over a month training them to respond to me.  Whew!

I would like to start some nature walks now, but they can’t involve maintaining everyone’s attention while speaking to them about interesting things.  They simply need some time to squish around in an engaging environment and touch stuff.  The talking needs to happen beside them as they explore or in answer to their questions as they discover.  I’m sure this is not huge news to many of you, but it is important to consider up front.  I think it would be really neat to invite some grade 5′s to come along with us.  The grade 5′s would be thrilled AND it would give them a reason to maintain the nature connection that I tried so hard to start last year.  I can’t quite give them up!

Well, I finally set up that aquarium like I was hoping to.  The way things were going, I didn’t think I’d ever get to this point, although it ended up being such a simple and obvious activity to do with my young wards.

For these first weeks of school, I have been completely preoccupied with establishing thoughtful routines, respectful relationships, and a general sense of calm and order.  You can’t know how utterly essential this is unless, of course, you have taught this level before.  Over and over again, I have experienced the sobering realization that, without me investing all of my brainpower, knowledge and experience into managing these little people, this classroom experience could be disastrous for everyone.  Bullying, anxiety, stubborn defiance, temper tantrums, peed pants, fighting, running away….herding cats is an understatement, I assure you.

I make it sound terrible.  It isn’t.  It is just very challenging.  I have experienced highs of relief, wonder and elation when I calmly danced my way through the times of craziness, calming and shaping our odd little community without yelling, shaking, crying, threatening or bribing.  Sweating, yes, but not losing control.  And strangely, I like the challenge.  I just wish someone were around to watch!  It’s unbelievable, really.

Then comes play time.  My little students know just how to do this and they do it very well.  They are imagination maestros.  Wooden blocks are expertly transformed into zoos, tall buildings, balancing wonders, and car jumps.  Primary colours are mixed with increasing expertise and used for the pure enjoyment of applying colour to paper.  The house is a doctors office with an emergency delivery being carefully executed.  Picture books are created.  Young scientists hold jars of food colouring up to the window to watch colours slowly transform.  I end up with a chance to teach the language of interaction in real time.  The biggest challenge is reeling them back in.

I want so badly to merge the natural play aptitude of my students with their growing understanding of how to listen, respond and respect others.  On Friday, I decided to take them out for their first listening walk.  I based it on a book of the same title by Paul Showers.  I wasn’t sure if they were ready for such a thing, but I was hoping that their curiosity about sounds they might hear, coupled with their enjoyment of the outside and their growing ability to focus on a specific task might equal some success.

Amazingly, 19 K’s and 1′s made their way around our field and through our forest without running off, without being silly or arguing and without jumping on one another.  I kept completely quiet, modelling my commitment to hearing the smallest sounds without my voice getting in the way.  I felt the attention and focus of some children really straining against the structure of the task, but many were completely engaged and all were quiet for the longest time that I have ever experienced with them.  They then enthusiastically shared the sounds they heard as I recorded them on a chart paper.  I was so thrilled, that I felt we should venture out again, this time taking the aquarium with us.

We now have an aquarium filled with rocks, dirts, leaves and rotting wood.  Our first visitors to this habitat are a darkling beetle and a small ant.  The kids are thrilled.  Four kindergarten girls spent their entire afternoon play time misting the habitat, adding elements such as a wet sponge and grass, and gently handing the beetle.  It was so easy and I feel like I have taken a step in that happy direction that I was so hoping to take.

All in all, I feel good.

During the past few months, I read my way through Last Child in the Woods (Richard Louv, 2005), Emergent Curriculum in the Primary Classroom (Carol Anne Wien, 2008), Reading With Meaning (Debbie Miller, 2003), and most recently, A Place for Wonder ( Heard and McDonough, 2009) in preparation for teaching my K-1 kids.  I was ready to jump into the year with my big picture blazing before me like a banner, in full technicolor.

It is funny how quickly visions shrink down to minute, but pressing details when the kids and parents are in front of you . I was shaking in my boots earlier this week, as I was about to experience all of my young students together in one room, at the same time and for a full day.  There were so many small planning things to consider and I had never experienced such a thing (at this level) before.  Bathroom routines, tape marks on the carpet, cups of sharpened pencils, tubs of books, word walls, paint smocks, labels for containers, safety line-ups, earthquake drills, listening routines….the list goes on and on!  It is difficult to keep the big picture blazing when there are so many small things that need to be done just right, or else!!!

This weekend, I am revisiting my big picture because I don’t want to lose it.  Do I want to nurture my young students’ sense of wonder?  Yes.  Do I want them to ask questions and feel compelled observe, explore, read, reflect, and write with passion?  Yes.  Do I want them to love school?  Yes.

So far, I feel like I have merely made it through the school days calmly and patiently.  I have had to anticipate, watch, respond, try and try again.  And this is only to convince children to gather and listen!  I believe this is
completely necessary, but I don’t want to get caught up in thinking that I am successful just because I have control.  I want the days that each child spends with me to have some meaning beyond learning how to function in a school environment.

Next week, I have to get them outside for more than just playground time.  I have an empty aquarium that I would like to fill with dirt, leaves and perhaps a few creepy-crawlies that we can observe too.  I’ll feel much better if I can get this started!  The sooner that I can see little bodies crouched and looking in the grass, the sooner I’ll feel like I am on the right track!

 

(By the way, this is a photo of my son stalking insects outside of an important monastery in Serbia.  Insects kept Quentin and Landon completely engaged in our travels wherever we went)

Another couple of precious days have passed.  It is really hard to prevent thoughts of life after vacation from seeping into my brain at this point.

The first of these noted precious days was spent at Krka, which is one of Croatia’s national parks.  Like everything else, it was completely overrun with thousands and thousands of tourists.  However, it was worth the day trip and would have easily been worth another if we’d had one to spare.

Krka is famous for its waterfalls, which pass over and through an amazing limestone landscape.  A wooden boardwalk winds over the streams and pools which are teaming with fish.  Eventually all of these streams converge in a dramatic series of waterfalls.  The icing on this limestone wedding cake is that once you reach the bottom of these tiers, you can take a little swim.

I was actually becoming increasingly grumpy with the traffic jam of tourists on the boardwalk and I wasn’t really sure that the lineup for the change rooms was worth it.  Stephen and the kids were gung-ho, so I went through with it despite my rising agoraphobia.  The water was perfect and actually not that crowded.  After carefully helping the kids test out the water, Stephen and I swam up to the waterfalls on our own.  Thank you Jelena and Dave!  We actually climbed up on one of the limestone formations and sat under the pounding waters of a small waterfall, which is something I’ve always wanted to do.

Before we knew it, it was time to go home.  If we’d had more time, we could have visited a monastery on an island in the middle of the lake, explored the park’s Roman history and hiked trails away from the throngs of tourists.  I would really like to come back and do this one day.

I have to mention that we grilled fish in an authentic wood burning barbeque that evening.  It was a great experience, although fish is so frustrating to eat, especially with young kids.  I had to root through every little piece of fish to take out the bones before feeding it, forkful by forkful, to the kids.  Not exactly satisfying.

Today we were off to Split, which was a seemingly endless, stop-and-go bus ride away.  We were hoping to take the ferry from Trogir, but the wind was too strong (Stephen’s hat escaped across the busy road not once, but twice today).  We finally arrived in Split an hour after leaving Trogir and hiked down to Diocletian’s palace on the waterfront.

We spent the afternoon eating ice cream, wandering the maze of streets in and around the original palace walls, and doing a little shopping.  We haven’t done any shopping on the trip so far, but Split had some interesting shops and some reasonable deals.  We really didn’t spend much of our time in these shops, but it is notable that we went into any as none of us like to shop.  I bought a necklace after much soul-searching and Stephen and the kids bought some clothes.

We, unfortunately, had the worst meal of the trip in Split.  I knew we were doomed the moment the off-coloured, tasteless wine was delivered to our table.  The mussels I ordered were so shriveled, cold and tough that I deemed them inedible and angrily marched them into the restaurant to let them know.  I was hoping that they would simply not charge us for them, but they insisted on making me another order.   The second attempt was somewhat better than the first, but it still took me a little while to regain my good mood after that experience.

At some point during the day, a random old man approached me and  insisted that I take the boys to the beach.  We didn’t know Split had a proper swimming beach as it is dominated by a busy working harbour.  But we followed the old man’s advice and-lo and behold-found the first sandy, gently sloping beach of the trip.  The kids had a great time running in and out of the water in their undies while Stephen and I watched nervously from the shore (it was crowded and Landon likes to range further and further from us).

Tomorrow we are off to Zagreb and the final countdown will have officially begun.  We have 3 full days left before we travel home.  By the way, I used the left over sardines which nobody but Jelena enjoyed eating and created a tasty fish tart.  It was my first time using phyllo pastry.  I am always very pleased with myself when I take left overs that no one wants and invent something that ends up being quite good!

Today we spent the day surrounded by the noisy buzz of cicadas in fragrant pines and the clear blue-green waters of a little bay somewhere outside of Trogir.  Yes, we found that pretty spot I was hoping we might find.  The island (Ciovo) is supposedly full of them, but you either need to drive or take a boat from Trogir.

Anyway, this little spot was not that far away (15 minutes drive from our pension) and we miraculously ended up avoiding the crazy, backed-up lines of traffic thanks to our impatience and Dave’s iPhone.  It felt pretty secluded, although we still had company and access to one of the prettiest restaurants we’ve seen so far.

We really took our time, allowing the boys to shape the day.  Landon is almost completely independent around the water.  He was in and out all day.  The only intervention he needed was in the application of sunscreen and reminders to keep hydrated.

Quentin is really starting to relax around deep water.  He bobs around like a cork, but still needs us within arms reach, more for reassurance than anything.  Stephen took both the boys out snorkeling.  Landon is an old pro, but Quentin usually panics and needs to bring his head up every few breaths or so.  Today, however, he had his first snorkeling epiphany.  He discovered a fish city with his dad and completely forgot that he was underwater breathing through a tube.  He was so pleased with himself!

As for me, I enjoyed hanging out in the water, supervising as the boys jumped off of the dock or searched around the rocks for fish.  I was able to go off on my own for a couple of relaxing swims, too.  The water is so easy to enjoy here.  It was nice to be in a state of mind where I could allow myself to be hypnotized by the perfect, almost mathematical lines that the sunlight created just in front of my hands as it reflected on the ripples of water.  And yes, all of this meditative relaxation did result in my first sunburn of the trip.  Fortunately, it was a minor one.  The good life does demand some sacrifices!

So, we were actually treated to one more day on the boat.  We had planned on staying two full days in Dubrovnik originally, but the crowds of tourists we so frightening that when my mom suggested that it might be nice for them to spend another day with the boys on the boat, we ditched Dubrovnik without hesitation.  It was Quentin’s birthday and he was thrilled to have a little Grandma Meanie time, anyway.

We ended up cruising out to the little town of Cavtat which is about 45 minutes away from Dubrovnik (by yacht, of course).  We spent the first couple of hours “parked” somewhere offshore.  The boys fed figs to schools of fish and practiced their dives and cannonballs off the back of the boat.  Stephen conked out after giving in to the gentle rocking of the boat (and possibly the alcohol which is clearly missing from the wine bottle in the photo).  Not a bad life, eh?

Cavtat itself is a gorgeous little town with a nice local vibe and manageable crowds of tourists.  Its restaurant scene isn’t anything special, but I enjoyed the slower pace.  It has a seawall which winds around the town and its teardrop shaped peninsula.  The water is the most beautiful, clear green-blue and is full of small fish.  We all enjoyed crouching down to watch these fish.  Actually, the beaches all around Dubrovnik and Cavtat were amazing.  They aren’t sandy and flat…they are rocky and full of interesting caves and pools.   I wish we were still there!

The following day we tried to tackle the fortifications of Dubrovnik, but we just couldn’t stomach the price to climb the stairs and walk around the outside wall in the blazing sun with thousands of people.  So, we relegated this task to our life’s “to do” list and wandered around inside the walls.  Our minds were, unfortunately, on breakfast more than anything else.  We quickly walked up and down the narrow streets and followed the wall as closely as we could.  It is a beautiful city, but it is just so hard to slow down and appreciate it when it is so hot and crowded!

We left Dubrovnik by around noon and were on the road to Trogir.  The roads were packed too, and we were held up in lines on both sides of the Bosnian section of the coast.  We found a great place to eat somewhere in a little valley in the Dalmation mountains.  They cooked our food (mixed grilled meat with fried potato) in a big, wood-burning stove/grill over glowing coals.  It was, of course, delicious.

By 6:00, we were in Trogir.  It is also a popular tourist town, but the crowds come in individual cars, rather than by bus loads and cruise ships.  So far, we love the market (which is touristy and over-priced, but still authentic), the restaurants, and the cool pedestrian streets of the old town.  The beaches here are not as beautiful or as accessible as what we experienced in Dubrovnik and Cavtat, but we still have a couple of days and are hoping to find at least one pretty spot that compares.

The weather has been hot, hot, hot, by the way.  Summer on the Adriatic!  I’m still trying to figure out a way to make time slow down, but as of yet have been unsuccessful.

Our first day in Dubrovnik was pretty unreal.

Dubrovnik  itself is an over-the-top sort of place.  It is ancient, shining, and barnacle-like with fortifications that kept it an independent republic over the centuries. No small feat in times when the Ottoman Empire dominated the Balkans, the Austro-Hungarian Empire pushed south through the Dalmation Coast, pirates swarmed the Adriatic and the Venetians ruled coastal trade and subjugated the Croatian people.   It has now, however, been completely taken over by tourists and surrounded on all sides by yachts and cruise ships.

Crazily, we were able to coordinate a day with my mom and dad, who just happened to be in the neighbourhood.  They started their vacation here in Dubrovnik and, since our schedules serendipitously lined up, we spent some good, old-fashioned family time with them and their good friends who happen to have….a boat!  And not just any boat–a crazy, luxurious yacht-boat.

They whisked us away from the tourist crowds on their little taxi boat early this afternoon.  Jelena couldn’t stop smiling the whole way.  We were all pretty psyched because we really wanted to see this famous boat that my parents are going to spend the next couple of weeks on.  Plus, the coast here is just so gorgeous.  We wanted to see it from the azure-blue waters.

We spent the afternoon and evening swimming, lounging, eating, drinking and being merry.  I tried very hard to slow down time in order to make the experience last for as long as I could.  Alas, here I am recalling it as I knew I eventually would be.  Landon and Quentin enjoyed it thoroughly, but had no clue how special it was.  Tourists actually took pictures of us as they passed by on their little excursions.  Ah!  Lifestyles of the rich and famous!

When we got back to the apartment later in the evening, giddy with disbelief, Stephen found us a video that perfectly matched our experience.  Rena and Zach showed us this video a couple of weeks ago, and we had very little appreciation for it at the time.  We get it now, however.   If you can, it’ll give you an idea at just how excited we were to be on the boat.  A big thanks to Hetty and Ron!  What an awesome day.

I have only one regret about deciding to drive through Bosnia to our destination of Dubrovnik: that we only passed through.

Bosnia is a beautiful, scenic country.  I actively watched the passing countryside through the window from the moment we entered the country until the moment we left it.  The roads were winding and twisty, so both Stephen and Quentin were a little car sick throughout the journey.  Roads traveled up mountains and down mountains, followed sinuous, emerald-green rivers and passed through one healing community after another.  Bosnia actually felt a lot like home…lots of dense forests, open pasture-land and impressive river canyons.  It reminded me of the Fraser Canyon in spots, Douglas Lake Ranch in others, and Duffy Lake Road at times.

The big difference was the obvious trauma that each community went through during the war in the nineties.  Houses were either freshly plastered and painted, pock-marked from bullet fire, or utterly demolished.  Every community had at least one cemetery.  I specifically looked for them, recalling the shape of the stones for either Muslim or Christian victims from documentaries I’d seen.  Sarajevo’s hillsides were bristling with them.  I felt a little bad for searching them out, but I just couldn’t help it.  When we were descending the mountains into Sarajevo on a narrow, single-lane road, I understood how easy it would be to trap the citizens the way they were during the siege.  I imagined the position of snipers and could see how they were able to pick out people as they crossed the streets below.

We only stopped briefly in Sarajevo to have a bite of lunch.  It was an interesting city to even see at a distance–beautiful, set in the middle of a ring of mountains, and recovering.  We also stopped for an hour in Mostar, which had also been devastated during the war.  The biggest wound to the little city was the destruction of the graceful, 500 year old bridge spanning the Neretva River.  We walked the rebuilt version of the bridge, which is still breathtaking even though it is a replica.  The people of Mostar have worked to restore many of the buildings along the river, especially those that are clustered around the bridge.  However, if you walk beyond this small area, the damage to the rest of the town is just as breath-taking as the scenic beauty of the bridge.  It is terrible to think that citizens of the same town directed such hatred towards one another, but it allows you to really cheer on the light, happy, tourist atmosphere of the town today.

I forgot to mention that we hired a driver to take us on this journey through the mountains.  We feel like we get the place now and would not hire a driver the next time we return.  And we really will return.  We really need to take our time and do it properly.

I can’t believe that tomorrow we’re off to Croatia already.  We were really spoiled here in Beograd and were pleasantly surprised by how much we were able to enjoy the city as a family.

Beograd is not a beautiful city in the standard sense, but it is easy to pick up on its spirit, both past and present.  It is ambitious and proud with its grand Saint Sava cathedral (still under construction), modern condo developments (standing half empty), and its public adulation of Novak Djokovic (tennis star) and Nicola Tesla (inventor and electrical engineering genius).  But with all its ambition, there is a humble reality.  Stephen and I were moved by the sight of working men selling their monthly bus passes to supplement their meager incomes. We saw abandoned, half-finished public works, Roma shanty-towns and the ruined shells of buildings bombed by Nato twelve years ago.  There simply isn’t the resources to deal with them, so there they stand, frozen in time.  Quentin and Landon were particularly fascinated by these “bombed out buildings”.  Quentin was constantly trying to wrap his head around the idea of buildings being bombed.  He wanted to know if Jelena were scared when it happened and if the “bad guys” who dropped the bombs were from Jupiter or Saturn.  We tried to explain the situation to him, but it just didn’t make any sense to him.  How could buildings be bombed by ‘”good guys”?

All of the dichotomous elements of the city’s infrastructure made it fascinating, but not scary.  We felt really safe and comfortable where ever we went.  We traveled from old to new Belgrade on the bus, which was easy to do not only because we had Jelena there to help us, but because the route was really straight forward.  Jelena’s dad took us on special tours of the city and always was there to transport us home if we ended  up staying out too late.  I told you we were spoiled, didn’t I?  He was quite taken with the boys and would have done anything to ensure their comfort.  He took us for walks on the Danube and the Sava Rivers, and helped us explore an interesting old churchyard and tower in Zemmen (right outside of New Belgrade).  We were treated to fresh bags of popcorn, which fed both the boys and the “wild” ducks.  I yammered on to him about what I knew of Serbian history from all of the reading I did only to make him feel badly that his English was not adequate.  I can be so oblivious to these things sometimes!  The result of my monologuing is that he promised to practice his English more.  My Serbian consists of exactly three phrases: thank you, good day and good night.  Perhaps I should do a little practicing as well.

We experienced Serbian hospitality beyond Jelena’s family as well.  In restaurants, shops and roadside fruit stands, people were very generous and very proud to serve us.  The food was always excellent and reasonable too.  We toured around Fruska Gora today and our favourite experience was buying apricot brandy (rakia) from a roadside farm fruit stand.  The women who owned the stand treated us to drinks and nectarines.  The boys played with her dog and she thought they were wonderful, of course.  I get the sense that Serbian people are extra happy to receive foreign tourists not simply to make money, but to show off the best of Serbia.  It is a good place, full of good people.

I’m not sure that I have done our experience here justice, but it is a good enough start.  It is late, late, late (past 2:00 am) and we have to be up early to head out on our road trip through Bosnia to Croatia.