The last few weeks has found us working with both a class group of grade 6/7’s and an after school group. Doing various activities in the park or classroom such as rope making, splitting cedar for shakes, carding wool and spinning, cutting and bending bamboo for joining,
and general weaving all towards making a pollinator house for bumble bees and mason bees with the skills we are sharing.
Yesterday, after David taught a group of kids how to split cedar into shakes with a froe and beetle, and I pulled some young ones over to learn about wool and carding ( one of the after-school minders said, this is real wool? like- not polyester?) I had a moment of realizing we are essentially building an old school village in a very urban environment- I used to go to such places on field trips as a kid with school- everyone dressed in a form of period costume, and churned butter and such… I can’t help but wonder what memories we are building for these inner city kids ( and adults) that come to work with us! I will likely be remembered as the cow girl ( my cowboy hat a necessity in the sun) who taught them weird stuff with wool, or plastic bags or plant stocks- that suddenly became yarn, or rope and then housing for bees! Our time at Trillium begins with great success, much hard work, but huge enthusiasm – especially for the plastic bag rope we made as a group- that a full week later is still getting dragged out each recess for more play.
The work continues, but so does the play, and next week our house should be done just in time to wake up the bees and show them the home we built for them!
More pictures of the work so far can be found on flickr here
Reblogged this on eartHand Gleaners Society and commented:
recent musings by Sharon from the Trillium North park buzzscaping residency.
LikeLike
Pingback: a month in review… | Sharon Kallis