Encounters with Nature in New York City Apartment: A Conclusion

As a final entry in this three part series, I’m writing to say that as of the end of May, Michael and I ceased to reside in our small New York City apartment.  After skipping around to other temporary homes in Manhattan, Berlin, and currently Brooklyn, at the end of August we will be making the four-day train journey back to the west coast.  There, we will settle indefinitely, and will reside in a not-quite-as-small Vancouver apartment.  

I felt it necessary to report that before vacating our New York City apartment, I managed to find good homes for our worms.  The preschool students at Hollingworth (at Teachers College) are now caring for the bin and the vast majority of the worms.  I also helped a friend - who was eager to start composting - to set up his own worm bin, and passed a smaller portion of the worms on to him to get him going.  Unfortunately, he recently informed me that these worms perished in the heat wave that’s hit New York this summer.  Despite this sad news, though, I’m confident that since he’s got the bin set up and knows the ropes, he’ll continue his composting endeavours at the end of this hellishly hot summer (he’s already starting scheming up cooling mechanisms for the worm bin for next summer).

As for the sprouted avocado plant (and other house plants), it’s also been passed on to the preschoolers.  The window farm, on the other hand, has been disassembled and will be making the journey back to Vancouver with us.  We’ll eventually put it back together and will hopefully manage to establish a more ‘fruitful’ farm out west.

And with that, I conclude the ‘Encounters with Nature in New York City Apartment’ series - as I look forward to the big move.  I anticipate having more encounters with the natural world outside of my apartment on the west coast, but will assuredly continue my indoor endeavours and experiments as well.  

To be continued.

A short video of my worm bin composting presentation for preschoolers has been compiled and posted on the EdLab Blog.  

Watch for the part when a little boy licks (or kisses?) a worm!  I didn’t catch him doing this during the actual presentation.  

More Berlin updates to come soon….

Some photos from the worm bin presentation….

This is the poster I designed to advertise last week’s worm bin event.  The workshops went really well!  The children were thrilled with the worms, and many of their parents came out for the event too!  The worms were such a hit, in fact, that I’m going to be giving my bin to the preschool.  I’ll present it to them at an all school event this Thursday.  I can’t imagine a better home for my wormies.

This is a lovely and detailed description of the workshop, written for the students’ parents by the director of the preschool:

Amelia began our workshop with a brief exploration of the children’s prior knowledge of earthworms. While the children were seated about a blue container, Amelia shared a bit more about the earthworms, giving all of the children an opportunity to feed the earthworms carrot peelings. Amelia first created a hole with a spade, and then the children placed the food inside the holes. Explaining that Amelia feeds her Red Wiggler Earthworms scraps for her kitchen, she emphasized how otherwise these materials would simply go unused and into the garbage.

After everyone had the opportunity to feed the earthworms, Amelia then shared the story, An Earthworm’s Life by John Himmelman – a sweet non-fiction book which focuses on the life-cycle and day-in-the-life of an earthworm. We learned that the white band about most earthworms is actually an egg sack. We also learned that the waste from earthworms is called castings – which becomes rich soil for plants to grow and flourish. After the book, it was time to stand up and wiggle and move like an earthworm. The children then had the opportunity to draw what the earthworms’ habitat (including the kitchen scraps, the life cycles and of course the dirt!) and a large floor and wall mural using oil pastels on painted brown paper. While some children drew, other children explored the worms hands on. Within Amelia’s blue bin there were worms of all ages and sizes (we also learned earth worms can live up to 4 years!). To extend our learning & exploring Amelia provided us also with a small container (in clear plastic with lots of wholes for air) with earthworms for us to continue to study in the classroom. Also, our wall murals are now in the classroom, too!

A few weeks ago, I attended a conference at Kean University in New Jersey entitled Educating the Creative Mind.  For it, I helped a professor prepare for and present two children’s art workshops.  Leading up to the conference, I (and two fellow art education students) had the most ‘fitting’ task of collecting found and recycled materials for the workshops.  Basically, this just enabled my pre-existing tendency to hoard such objects in my tiny apartment.  Collectively, we came up with a fantastic assortment of collage and construction materials for the workshop - almost entirely derived from our own art supply collections and ‘recycling bins’ (see top two photos).  The workshops were for a group of 3 and 4 year olds and a group of 4 and 5 year olds - along with their parents (and were observed by conference attendees).  The workshops - which were very much based in Lois Lord’s approach to teaching collage and construction - went very well.  It was exciting to watch the children circling around the table, ever so carefully making selections from the materials we had collected for them over the past months.

The bottom row of images are of the preschool classroom where we carried out our workshops.  The preschool is run according to the Reggio Emilia philosophy of education.  The teacher has created a beautiful, creative space in her classroom - which I found to be very inspiring.

Aside from the workshops, a major highlight of the conference for me was hearing Howard Gardner (who developed the theory of Multiple Intelligences) give the keynote address.  In his talk, he discussed research that he has conducted on creativity.  He discussed a project that he’s recently been working on, in an effort to introduce moral considerations into his research on creativity, and to look at ways to mobilize creative human potentials in a positive or prosocial sense.  This most recent effort has taken the form of the “Good Work Project,” which is elaborated upon at goodworkproject.org.

Recently, my husband came across a New York Times article describing a preschool, here in Manhattan, that has created a ‘Materials Center’ comprised of an extensive collection of recycled and natural objects. These objects - ranging from bottle caps, wine corks, and wood scraps to pebbles, vinyl records and dental X-rays - are donated by parents, local businesses, and anonymous community members, among others. They’re meticulously cleaned and organized in this unique ‘supply closet’ and then used by teachers for art projects in their classes. One parent, whose son attends the preschool, was quoted as saying: “I love it, because the children really get a sense of reusing objects and how important that is.”

Perhaps I will start referring to the ever-proliferating collection of yogurt and deli containers (which can’t be recycled in New York!) underneath my kitchen sink as my ‘Materials Center’. My plan is to use these things for arts and crafts projects in the children’s classes I’m helping out with this summer.

(The collage at the top of the page is a ‘mind map’ that I created for a course reflection assignment last semester. I used egg cartons, paper bags, and a variety of other recycled items from my own ‘Materials Center’ to make it!)