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| The garden is now coming into its own |
I am always astonished at what children can do when you let them do it. After three years of working with them they still continue to surprise me. So, when Kevin first arrived at the school, he said, are you sure children can use these tools? I said, yes, with some supervision, yes, of course they can. And so they have. Chisels and hammers, trowels and screwdrivers, saws and scrapers, and a whole host of other things as well. They have chipped and mixed and molded their way to concreting bliss and they have been absolutely fantastic working through rain and cloud and sun. Cleaning and patiently washing and wiping and of course... messing around. The entire project brought us together as a class.
Today i asked each of them what they learnt during the process... to mix concrete, to shutter, to cement blocks in, to mold... and of course we learnt so much about each other as well. And to their credit, no one had a meltdown or lost it or did anything like that. They all worked like soldiers. And you know what Kevin and I learnt so so much too.
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| Rotivating |
So this bed is pretty huge. It is about Two metres by six metres. It was rotivated because i asked the boys to weed around the trees. I said, look, there are some trees here that need our attention. We need to get rid of the dock and comfrey around them. Can you do this? I turned my back for fifteen minutes and in that time they had started rotivating the best part of the bed. By the time they had done with it, we had cleared two paths on either side of the bed and the entire bed had been turned over. This was not part of the plan, but now it is. I said, Kevin is going to have a heartattack when he sees that. He is going to be really annoyed. Why they asked. It was not part of the plan, i said. He is worried we won't look after it during the holidays. So is he going to leave Stephanie? No, i said, that is not how it works. Just because you are annoyed with someone it does not mean that you leave! No, we can work it out.
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| Our herb spiral is awesome |
I remember when we put this in the rest of the garden was a wilderness smothered in dock and comfrey. I remember one dad saying to me, maybe this will inspire other people to do up the rest of the garden...
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And one year one we those words have come to pass
This is the other side of the herb spiral |
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| The twisted willow we rescued. |
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| Our building site when it is not in use |
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The children also do clean up ... but nothing makes me happier than to see
them running about the garden and playing in it |
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We are digging a curved path...
i think that this year we have just enough time to make a bed |
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How delighted with ourselves are we...
we did good Class Three, we did good. |
Honestly, i feel like i have the most awesome job in the world. Kevin an I were saying how fantastic it was, how much we have learned from the children and learned about ourselves. How lucky were we to be given this space and time and these chances to do these things with kids. At the end of each session we review the work we have done and Kevin tells the children exactly what he will do in order to make sure we are on track. This time round he held up the drawing and said, see this - we had an idea, and then it became a drawing, then it became a mess and then it became a place we worked in. The idea came from nowhere, into our heads and then on to paper and then it went into our hands and now it is here. This garden seat came from nowhere and you have made it happen... i almost cried...
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