Silverwood - 6 hours - Sam Longley, Alyssa Riggs
This week at Silverwood in Doodlebugs I taught my lesson! The theme of the day was amphibians, so we focused mainly on frogs and toads. For my lesson, we made little frog hand puppets. The doodlebug curriculum is pre-set, so the hand puppet craft had already been chosen as the activity for our lesson. In previous years, the puppet was by decorating a paper plate with oil-pastel crayons, folding it in half, and then attaching google eyes, a pipe cleaner tongue, and fastening arms and legs on using metal paper-fasteners (so that they could move around). This is the lesson I followed, though many technical errors arose during our craft time.
This craft demanded the students apply many different skills- cutting, coloring, folding, and applying. The central issue with this craft was the use of oil pastels. Though they are a fun and different medium to use, they are messy and don't allow for any adhesive to stick. Another issue that extended from this was that we didn't have enough paper-fasteners, so we had decided to let the kids glue their arms and legs on. halfway through the project we decided to staple them on, since nothing would stick to the plates anyway. The project felt a bit chaotic, but everyone seemed happy with the final product, despite the challenges.
On this day, I stayed for the afternoon Doodlebugs session as well. The morning group is twelve 4-5 year olds, and the afternoon Doodlebugs is only seven, and tends to have a lower energy. I had the benefit of seeing Sam teach the lesson in the afternoon. I feel like I learned a lot by seeing how I did it and how she did it, also knowing the challenges that we had dealt with in the morning and approaching them differently. When Sam taught, she went very slow and stopped to ask questions though out, something that I wish I had been sure to do. Right from the start we said that we would staple the legs on, and brought glue dots to apply the google eyes. The craft went much smoother in the afternoon! Another benefit of staying for the afternoon session was that there is a different naturalist whom I had not worked with yet. Seth has an excellent way with the kids, he is patient, playful, and calm.