Pedagogist: Shirley-Ann Royer
Educators: Tianna, Annie, Brittany*
Children: Alex, Joy, Spencer, Henri, Millie, Levi, Jana, Britta, Kelly, May, Haylie
With support from ECPN leadership team – Meagan Montpetit & Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw
This field note tells an incomplete story of the complex, interconnected worlds in which children live. In an early childhood classroom on Vancouver Island, we make curriculum that nurtures children’s relations with more-than-human entities and forces through glimpses of emerging relations among a group of three- to five-year-old children.
When Brittany (an educator) brings a crow’s nest she found abandoned in her backyard to the classroom, the children respond with deep curiosity and interest. They draw, work with clay, and think with each other and the nest over many months. Drawing and clay work invites us to slow down and pay attention to the complexity and mystery of the materiality of the crow’s nest architecture.
In the presence of the nest, the children tell multiple and diverse stories. Possibilities for rich connections, wonderment, and transformation emerge in the classroom.
Encountering the Nest
Alex: “It’s an eagle’s nest.”
Joy: “A robin made it.”
Spencer: “It’s sticks and sticks. And hay.”
Henri: “Wow, how’d it got made?”
Spencer: “When I came to my house, I saw some birds making a nest. So, they bend the sticks, then they curled the sticks around.”
Millie: “One time my dad cut down a tree and it was my birthday and we chopped it into little pieces so we could have a fire. And there was a nest. A big one made with sticks. There were eggs in the nest and a dead bird. A body, not a skeleton.”
The children’s speculations move beyond the question of who made the nest – they are also interested in why birds make nests.
Joy: “To lay eggs in.”
Levi: “To keep their baby birds safe.”
Spencer: “So their little baby eggs can hatch.”
Alex: “They need to be comfy.”
Jana: “They need to be warm.”
Joy: “Humans don’t nest.”
Britta: “Birds make nests to sleep.”
Jana: “So birds can eat worms.”
Britta: “They want to take care of their baby birds.”
To nurture this interest, we invite children to draw in the company of the nest.
As the children draw, the nest invites many speculative stories filled with likely companions such as hummingbirds, baby birds, wind, eggs, trees, and the ocean, as well as some unexpected ones such as robots, pizzas, donuts, and more.
Nests and Sticks
The children are curious about the sticks that form the nest.
Spencer asks, “Why are sticks always brown?”
To attend to Spencer’s question, we read Stickler Loves the World by Lane Smith. The story is about two woodland friends who walk the forest marvelling at the world, especially at the wonder of each unique stick they encounter. Stickler Loves the World invites children to see the nest differently. With magnifying glasses, they pay attention to each stick that forms the nest.
Spencer:“They’re not all the same colour brown.”
Joy:“They are soooooo long, but twisty and turny. But some aren’t, they’re tiny.”
Joy:“Look, this one is poking me.”
Alex:“But how’d they get in there?”
Tianna: “Yes, how did the crow carry these big sticks with only a beak and claws?”
Spencer holds his hand out and curls his fingers, like talons, around a magnifying glass.
Spencer:“Like this!”
Tianna sweeps up some of the bits and pieces the nest sheds. Spencer looks at the tiny bits with the magnifying glass.
Spencer:“It’s just sticks and sticks and sticks. All the way down. Look. I thought it was dirt, but it’s not, it’s sticks.”
A few of the more loosely woven sticks from the outside of the nest untangle and fall to the table.
Spencer: “Look at these sticks. You can rub sticks together to make fire.”
May: “But you wouldn’t want to ’cause you might make the school go on fire.”
May: “When I rub them, they bump. Not like yours.”
Spencer:“They bend too much.”
As we pay attention to the sticks that have been woven into the crow’s nest, we notice small significances and uniquenesses. The children identify particular sticks – the one with the bumps, the twisty-turny one, and the bendy one. The children encounter the nest in relational ways rather than as an object. When they pay attention to each carefully placed stick, the nest becomes more than a nest.
The Middle of the Nest
Tianna brings another abandoned nest to the classroom – this time a robin’s nest. The children look closely at the much smaller nest.
Spencer: “It’s grass. It’s mud and grass.”
Joy:“No, it’s not grass, it’s hay. I went to a farm once, and I know that’s hay.”
The children notice there is a hole in the bottom of the nest.
Haylie:“So how will the eggs stay in?”
Joy:“The babies might fall out.”
The children consider how they might weave in the missing part.
Joy makes rainbow-coloured wool using coloured chalk and pats it into the bottom of the robin’s nest.
Joy: “Now the babies can be safe.”
The children are curious if the crow’s nest has a hole in the middle, like the robin’s nest.
May says we need to look at the bottom of the big crow’s nest to see if there is a hole.
We tip the nest gently on its side and the children look closely at the bottom through the magnifying glasses.
May: “Huh. It’s the same. Sticks.”
We rest the nest back on the table and try to see inside to the middle of the nest, but the sticks that lie across the top make it difficult to see.
Spencer:“We need to move these sticks.”
The children carefully disentangle the sticks on the top and are surprised by what they find.
Haylie: “How did the crow get the big pinecone into the nest?”
Spencer:“What kind of hair is this?”
Haylie: “It’s dog hair.”
Joy: “No, it’s people hair.”
Henri: “Where it come from?”
Tianna: “You know what, to me it looks like horsehair. Maybe the nest came from a farm.”
Britta: “Look at all these little baby pinecones. Why’d the crow put them in there?”
Spencer: “Oh, what’s this?”
Spencer points to something white that is poking through the tangle of tiny sticks and hay.
Alex: “What’s this fluff?”
Jana: “It looks like the fluff that’s in my stuffies at home.”
Annie: “Where would a crow get that?”
Joy finds a small feather tucked in amid the grass, moss, bark, and lichen that line the middle of the nest.
Spencer: “What kind of bird is this feather from? Why’s it here?”
Joy: “I think it’s from a hummingbird.”
Alex: “I think it’s from a duck. The duck’s feathers fall off. I saw ducks at the beach once and they left lots of feathers.”
Joy: “Ducks’ feathers are bigger.”
Spencer: “It’s from a robin that left its feather behind.”
Joy: “No, it’s too small. It’s a hummingbird feather.”
Making Nests
The children make nests with wool and paper.
Joy: “I want to make a nest, but I need something to stick it.”
Kelly says she wants to make a nest too. She says she wants mud. We bring clay to the table. It is sticky and malleable and holds the wool nests to the paper.
To extend children’s drawings and nest making, we invite them to experiment with clay– a material that demands different attention toward nest making. The clay’s unfamiliarity confronts children with difficulties and resistances, as well as possibilities, and provokes them to experiment with what clay can and can’t do.
May: “This is a nest, and here is a bird. And another bird. And another bird.”
May: “They’re all in the nest together. One is the momma, and the others are the babies.”
Clay invites children to think with nests in a different way than drawing and calls us to pay attention to the three-dimensionality of the big crow’s nest.
The children are curious how the crow’s nest can be so big.
Alex: “I want to make a big one, like that.”
Henri: “How we do it?”
Alex: “It’s gonna take a lot of clay.”
The children talk together about how to make a big nest.
Joy: “First we need the sticks, then the grass, then the wood, and then the moss.”
May: “They need a refrigerator to keep their worms cold.”
Jana: “Hay is from the trees.”
Joy: “We could cut some grass from over there (pointing to the yard) and put it in the nest.”
Levi: “Sticks and strings and probably some of that stuff” (pointing to photographs on the wall of the children working with clay).
Alex: “Clay is sticky, sticky, sticky.”
Levi: “We have to work for the birds.”
Levi: “If we make it they will love us and be our pets.”
Alex: “It’s hard work to do this. You can’t do it by yourself.”
Tianna: “How do the crows make their nests by themselves?”
Alex: “Their babies help.”
Tianna: “How did the Chestnut-Backed Chickadee get named that?”
Joy: “The people gave them their names.”
Jana: “Put some yarn in the top, we need some yarn in there.”
Joy: “This will be left out for the babies to pull on.”
Spencer: “Who are we making this for? Will we put it in the yard?”
Joy: “This nest is for Chestnut-Backed Chickadees.”
Child-Nest Relations
Stories and questions continue to emerge as the children deepen their relationship with nests. Children’s collective research – thinking, drawing, and working with nests – is an instance of curriculum making that nurtures relations with the world beyond the human. As the children pay attention to the small, enticing significances and surprises of nests, they attend carefully to structures beyond those created by humans. The multiple stories, wonderings, and possibilities the children create and encounter are not fully part of the human world. Instead, these emerge from complex interdependencies and relations that are both unique and unpredictable. Thinking with nests invites the children to consider alternate ways of living beyond their own lives.
*Children and educators’ names are pseudonyms.
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