Some interesting things can happen when you allow nature to come into your classroom. One example is about a little boy bringing a tadpole to school in a jar. This was in a school in the mountains of Kentucky, many years ago. A fish bowl was found and more creek water was added to give the tadpole more room in which to develop. We watched the transition from tadpole to frog. We were all delighted when one day we found that the tadpole had become a green tree frog, complete with adhesive discs on his toes. This was a revelation to us all as we learned that they lived in a tree.. None of us had seen one before and it was a new experience. Here was an exciting event and we were motivated to tell about it in writing, labeling and sharing the story with other classrooms. At the end of the day we took him back to where he was found and released him, thanking him for coming to our school.
A similar experience occurred in a different classroom, only we had a cocoon to watch. The cocoon looked like a cigar only shorter. I mistakenly thought it might be a butterfly, so we all had to wait and see just what would emerge. The wire cage I had built for the cocoon was put on our science table and after some time it was placed up on a high shelf and we all forgot about it. One day an excited child called out for us all to look at our cage. We saw a large luna moth (Tropaca luna), described as crescent-marked, pastel-green wings, the hind pair of which end in elongated tails. It was indeed a vision of beauty and a joy for each of us. We found information about it in one of my books on insects from my encyclopedia of animals. We found many ways to share information about it with other children, through writing and language. And we all learned some interesting facts about one of nature's unique creatures.
In the years around 1949, teachers did not had less restrictions on what they did in the classroom as they do today. Also the curriculum was different. We had a unit on pets. As part of our program we learned about what kind of pets the children had and how they cared for them. We decided to have a pet show and each child was to bring in his pet on a specified day. We made charts and posters and advertised that we were having this event and the entire school was invited to come and vote for their favorite pet. The vote was cast as a penny, to be placed in a box on each child's desk beside the pet - on the desk also. All of the school came filing in, by classroom. We actually collected twenty dollars. I am not sure what the value of that twenty would be today, but we decided to use it for supplies in our classroom.. You may be wondering about the winner, so I will tell you the pet with the most votes was a hen named Betty. It may be that a grandmother stuffed the ballot! I was not about to question who voted how, as it was a secret ballot, or as secret as it could be in our circumstance. Teachers were not supplied with any extras in the classroom, We were only given text books which we had to take very good care of, so they could be saved for the next year students to use. In a sense this was a lesson in civics as when the children would hear about an election coming up and hear talk about voting, they would have had some voting experience.
These activities all helped each of us to learn something new and enjoy doing so.
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