An example of some of our “Creature” activities from the past year:

The children spent time building structures with various objects to protect themselves from creatures like goblins, dragons, witches and then creating story lines for their play.  They wanted to make sure they were all safe from these creatures and figuring out how to include everyone became an important part of this construction. This activity promoted fine and large motor skills, eye-hand coordination, spatial awareness, reasoning and problem solving, creativity, persistence, social skills. This led to painting creatures and creating story lines that included their creatures, from which we made their very own children’s book, “Valhalla Creatures” of which each child received a copy.

We then turned to thinking on what the word “creature” could mean or be.  It could include things we can’t see like germs or what makes sour dough starter.  This led to making a sour dough starter, feeding it until it was big enough to make sour dough bread.

We collected materials from the forest, made papier mache, to make creature/bug homes.  Outside we looked for, observed and learned to safely hold bugs (ants, centipedes, conifer beetles, snails, grasshoppers, worms).  We learned the importance of flowers to the bees and to us as food pollinators.  We harvested dandelions and made dandelion jelly. We made our own 3D spiders and together created a spider web for them.  The children noticed they were finding a lot of worms so a worm bin was created so children could feed their earthy friends with their own compost material.

The children also took part in the salmon release at Slocan beach and some families travelled to the Yaqan Nukiy powwow to experience an Indigenous gathering. You can find out more about our adventures at salmonspeaks.ca