TheBanyanTree: Quite a week

[Theta Brentnall]

There's nothing quite so much fun as seeing the spark light up in little eyes when you share your excitement about the natural world. It sounds like you had a wonderful play date. 

Theta

Sent from my iPad

> On Jun 2, 2017, at 6:45 PM, peter macinnis <petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> 
> I have played with 200 or so proxy grandchildren this week, and amazingly, emerged at the end, still with my voice almost intact. These were mainly Years 1 and 2, ages 6 and 7, though yesterday, I was with Year 6, talking astronomy, culture and stuff, plus I reminded them of Crocodile Dundee's famous line: "That's not a knife, THIS is a knife", before producing a basalt blade that I made, and cutting paper with it. That was our only day inside.
> 
> It was cold all week, as Australians see it: our official winter starts on 1 June, and it arrived on time, so it was about 18°C with wind chill taking it down to ~14°C. To show you how vicious our winter is, I have dug out the thumbnails I used in the sheet I did for them, to help them spot what we were looking for, and they found all the flowers. (The third last was taken in better lighting conditions, a few weeks ago, but it was also in our area, just hard to photograph).
> 
> The main delight was the taddies, as kids that age (or mine) call tadpoles. On the first day, I observed that the water level had dropped, so when I appeared in the school grounds next morning, two small boys ran up to ask how the taddies were.
> 
> "They're still alive," I said. "I took 3 litres [2/3 gallon] in, and it was just mud, but I put the water in, and they all came out of the mud, where they must have been hiding. I'm just going to get some more."
> 
> Thursday morning, they waylaid me again for a health report, and as I had by then added 25 litres, I could tell them the tadpoles were alive and well.
> 
> I showed them a 200-million-year-old fossil sandbank, and told them to look for another one, inside the school grounds. On Friday, three girls were waiting near the gates to show me where it was.  We went over, I told them that wasn't the one I meant, but theirs was better than mine, but to keep looking. (It was mine, but there's no room for honesty when hearts and minds are at stake.)
> 
> On most trips, I showed some of them how to handle ants (there were these marvellous long-legged ones), and the last picture in my set shows a sundew, an insect-eating plant. I fed two of them some cheese, but they weren't hungry, and we found another incredibly delicate species. I saw one, then the kids found more, and as each class after that came through, I told them there were probably more, and in turn, they peered into the grasses and discovered more plants, which I solemnly told them were new ones to me. (Remember: there's no room for honesty when hearts and minds are at stake.)
> 
> I also showed them how Aboriginal children who lived in the area, just three of my lifetimes ago, made ochre from stones that lay on the track, and then demonstrated how I was fixing up the erosion on the track, and two groups found me a bird's nest.
> 
> I can't speak for them, but I had a wonderful time.
> 
> peter
> 
>