Keywords

ethics intimacy more-than human relationality curriculum making

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*All children’s names are pseudonyms.

In the centre of the play yard stands a magnificent Pacific crabapple tree. Throughout the year, the tree shares many gifts with the children and educators of Sunflower Early Childhood Centre, situated on the unceded traditional territory of the Tsimshian people in Terrace, British Columbia. Climbing and swinging from the branches, accepting the gift of shade from the bright summer sun, picking and eating the vivid red crabapples the tree so generously offers – we care about this tree.

While picking crabapples, an educator is surprised to discover that the tree offers shelter for others. A wasp’s nest is hidden up in the branches, obscured from view by the green leaves, grey bark of the branches, and the tiny, bright red apples.

The educators and I discuss the exciting discovery of the nest. We wonder:

How long has it been in the tree?

Did anyone ever get stung?

Are the wasps still inside?

Are they alive?

What should we do with the nest?

Is it safe to leave it in the tree?

The surprising discovery of the wasp’s nest provokes the educators, children and me to carefully consider the interdependency of human and more-than-human relationships. Wasps have a reputation as villains, something to loathe and destroy. Yet, if these wasps lived in the crabapple tree all summer and nobody was stung, nobody was hurt, could we just leave the nest in the tree?

The educators and I decide to leave the nest in the tree, for now. Our pedagogical choices at this centre are grounded in a commitment to thinking with all world relations and enacting common worlds pedagogies. Therefore, in considering the wasps and their nest, we ask questions like: How might our decisions help us relate to the wasps? How might we use the discovery of the nest in the tree to get to know wasps and to nurture human-wasp relations?

Looking Closely

It is now very cold and windy at the centre. The wind nips at the paper edges of the wasp’s nest high in the tree. As small pieces tear off and swirl around the play yard, the educators collect them for a closer look. Placed into a small paper bag, the delicate bits of nest feel weightless.

Back inside, the children, educators and I open the paper bag and pull out the pieces of the nest, placing them onto a large grey sheet of paper on the table. The children are wary.

Simon*: “No, I don’t like it!”

Ella: “It’s scary!”

Finn: “Do birds eat the bees? Harpreet, where are the bees? The birds attack the nest and eat the bees. The bees hurt.”

We look closely at the preciseness of the wasp nest’s many cells, each tiny hexagon just like the others.

How do the wasps make them all the same? This must have been a lot of hard work.

Some children touch the paper cells. We are curious about their shape. Did the wasps come out of these holes? Looking closely at the broken pieces of the nest, we realize that some of the cells are covered with paper at the top.

What could this mean? 
Are there wasps inside?

We decide to carefully open one of the closed cells and are surprised when a dead wasp slips out of the cell! It is grey, and its body is frozen in the shape of the paper cell. The children are afraid.

Lucy: “There’s a bee in there!” 
Finn: “It’s scary!”

Simon: “I don’t like the bee; I don’t like it at all!”

I find a few more cells with wasps left inside. The children and I wonder together – why didn’t these wasps fly away with the others? The children argue:

Finn: “They are dead!” 
Robin: “No, they are sleeping!”

Sting Stories

To help us get to know the wasps that lived in the crabapple tree, the educators and I decide to offer the children charcoal sticks to draw alongside the pieces of the nest.

Drawing enlivens the children’s ideas about the wasp’s nest. The children are drawing, not to represent wasps or nests, but rather to think in relationship with others – the wasps.

As children explore the pieces of the nest and draw with the charcoal, they talk through their understandings of wasps. The educators and I collect traces of this moment through photographs, video, audio recordings and written notes. This documentation process enables us to follow children’s collective ideas and pursue different types of questions that might help us deepen our relationship with wasps.

Leo: “Hey, what’s that?” 

Kirsten: “That’s a wasp. Have you seen a wasp before?”

Leo: “YEAH, YEAH! I was at the park, a wasp did that (gestures to hand) and then it got mad at me, and then it just STUNG ME!”

Robin: “I got bit right there (pointing at self). I went to the woods, I went to the house to get Mom and Dad, I ran back inside, I ran inside and said Mom, Mom I got an owie on my belly – that wasp – and then she put a band aid on.”

Kirsten: “What happened when you got stung, Leo?” 

Leo: “Well, I was screaming, and she forgot the band aid!”

Kirsten: “Sam, have you been stung by a wasp before?”

Sam: “Yeah.”

Jimmy: “But guess what?! Um, Sam, I have a risk! When you run away with bugs chasing you with, yeah, food in your hand, then you drop the food out of your hand…the bees will stop chasing you.”

Kirsten: “Isn’t that a smart plan? If they drop the food, then the bees will stop chasing you.”

Jimmy: “Yeah, but they could still chase you.”

Kirsten: “Yes they could still, you’re right. It depends on how angry or playful they’re being.”

Sam: “No, they’re not angry. They’re doing this (moves hands around). They won’t, but—they won’t hurt you.”

Jimmy: “Yeah, if they sniff you…they won’t bite.”

Kirsten: “But sometimes when we get scared and start running around, the wasp doesn’t know what to do, so they might sting us or bite us because they’re scared.”

Jimmy: “But when we just run and we, yeah, drop the food, they will stop chasing us.”

But, where did the nest go?

With the cold, wet, dark days of winter looming, the children and I notice that the wasp’s nest is changing. It is getting smaller and looks quite ragged. The children ask to go outside to get a closer look at the nest. They want to know where the wasps have gone. It’s very cold, and the educators, children and I bundle up to head outside to sit under the crabapple tree with clipboards, paper and charcoal pencils. Looking up at the nest, the children scratch the charcoal pencils over the paper drawing nests and wasps.

While outside, we discover a large piece of the nest lying on the ground under the tree! When Harpreet, one of the educators, tries to pick it up, it doesn’t budge.  
Harpreet: “Oh, it’s stuck to the grass!”  
Kirsten: “That’s why it didn’t blow away, it was frozen to the ground!”

The children express concern for the nest and the wasps. They have watched the nest slowly fall apart, and the discovery of this large section of cells lying on the ground emphasizes that the wasps no longer have a home. It’s cold. Where will the wasps go to keep warm? Did they all die?

Robin: “But where did the nest go?”

Finn: “The nest is broke!”

Robin: “But how are we gonna get it back together?”

Leo: “Can I see it?”

Looking closely at the piece of nest, the children and I notice a wasp’s face poking out of one of the cells. The wasp is lifeless, frozen like the chunk of the nest it’s nestled in.

Robin: “He must have died in there.”

Searching for the Nest

Curiosity about where the rest of the nest has gone leads us to an adventure outside of the boundary defined by the playground fence. One of the educators, Navneesh, shares that she has seen a piece of the wasp’s nest on the ground outside of the fenced area.

It’s very, very cold. Bundled up in warm winter gear, the children, Harpreet and I gather at the fence and Harpreet struggles to unlock the back gate. The lock is frozen. Finally, the lock gives way and the gate creaks open. The children push through the gate out into the open grass. We search the grass for any sign of the nest, but find nothing. We decide to cross the street to search through the frozen piles of leaves that have been gathered by the strong fall winds.

The sound of the frozen leaves under our feet draws our attention.

Swish crackle crunch.  
Swish crackle crunch. 

Although we all look very closely for a sign of the nest, we find nothing. 
Just as we are starting to fear that we won’t find it, Harpreet suddenly exclaims, “I found something!” She bends down and comes up with a large piece of intact cells from the inner nest.  
Kirsten: “Oh look, it’s the top of the nest!” We can see where it had been attached to the crabapple tree. We are so excited!

The children hurry over to see the piece of the nest.

Robin: “The bees put it there so the people would know where it is! I want to put it all back together.”

A Spontaneous Projection

Revisiting our documentation from our search for the nest, the educators and I set up a ‘movie theatre’ and the children sit in a semicircle of chairs to watch the GoPro video of the day we found the top of the wasp’s nest outside of the playground.  As the children watch the video, we talk about that very cold day we spent looking for the pieces of the wasp’s nest that had blown out of the crabapple tree.

Children speculate together about what has happened to the wasps.

Leo: “They’re all dead.” 
Robin: “Not all of them are dead! Some of them are dead. Some of them are sleeping and some of them are in their eggs.” 
Jimmy: “I want to have a look, a little bit, to see if there’s a wasp dead in there.”

Alongside the laptop that is playing the video, Harpreet sets out the pieces of the wasp’s nest that have been collected over the past few months. The children cautiously poke at the pieces of the nest, still worried that a wasp might come to life and sting.

The children are curious yet wary as they look closely at the broken pieces of the nest.

Simon nervously asks, “It’s not alive anymore? It’s not alive anymore?”

The children carefully examine the piece of the nest with the cells still intact.

Simon: “Hey guys, excuse me! There’s a broken one!”

Robin: “Yes, there’s broken pieces. Yeah, ’cause the bees got out, and they DIED! Yeah, ’cause the bees died!”

Robin: “Oh no! That’s not good at all. The back of the body is here. And the head is over here.”

Simon: “Oh no! I can’t find ’em in here! I can’t find ’em! I can’t find ’em!”

Jimmy expresses concern as a child handles the piece of the nest with the intact cells.

Jimmy: “Don’t break that one. We like this one. Don’t break it.” 
Robin: “How can we put it back together? I think we can do it with glue.”

Simon: “I’m scared of the wasps.” 
Harpreet: “But why do we get scared from them?” 
Robin: “What do we get scared from? I know! It’s the NOISES! Making the noises! THE NOISE! I know why, I know why. They have a scary sound.”

Jimmy: “When you run, they chase you!” 
Harpreet: “Why do they chase us?” 
Robin: “I know! ‘Cause, ’cause they wanna eat our blood! They want to suck our blood!”

The children want to look more closely at the nest pieces and the dead wasps discovered in the paper cells. Harpreet decides to bring out the light projector, and the children place the nest pieces onto it. A large white piece of paper is set up in front of the projector where the images of the nest and wasps loom large in tones of grey. Children bring magnifying glasses to the light projector for a closer look.

Some children ask to draw at the table. Harpreet brings out sheets of paper and coloured markers, pieces of the nest and magnifying glasses. The educators and I are intentional with the materials that we offer and pay close attention to the children’s curiosities and wonderings. As the children draw, they are getting to know wasps differently. Human and more-than-human relationships are explored through our curricular choices around the wasp’s nest.

Jimmy: “Those are where they feel, and those are where they walk, those are where they fly on your hand, then they feel you, then they walk. But that’s so cool. They have those, they have those, and they have those.” (pointing to the wasp’s body parts)

These field notes have described how a pedagogist and educators paid close attention, in sustained ways, to children’s collective curiosities around a wasp’s nest.  Our intention has been to nurture alternative relationships with wasps; that is, different than framing them as villains or victims.