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RE teaching report.
I was lead teacher for Religious Education again this morning, for the last time this year. The RE year ends June 10; June 3, which would ordinarily be my week, is an intergenerational service, and then June 10 all three of us will jointly lead some kind of end-of-year celebration.
This week was another tree-themed lesson. Last week, the class went to visit their class tree. After our chalice lighting, we started out this morning by looking at pictures of the tree and talking about how it looked in springtime. Then I asked them to tell me about the kinds of things that people do with trees. Plant and water them, they suggested. Do people make things out of trees? They weren't quite sure.
I had set up a little display of objects on a side table, and I gathered them around it. There were: maple leaves, maple seeds, an orange, a bottle of maple syrup, a rubber band, a couple of tea bags, some tissues, a newspaper, a book, a wooden clothespin, a pencil, a paintbrush with a wooden handle, and a small wooden train on a piece of wooden track. I asked them if anything on the table came from trees. Right away, they pointed out the leaves, seeds, and (after some hesitation) the orange.
"Everything on this table comes to us from a tree," I said. They laughed, thinking I was joking. "Not a book! That doesn't come from a tree." (Actual quote!) We went through and talked about how each item on the table originally came from a tree. Then I told them that we were going to be tree detectives. ("Does anyone know what a detective is?" "It's a person who figures things out.") We took a walk, or actually a madcap run, through the RE building and the Parish Hall, looking for things made from trees. Tables! Chairs! Corkboard! Pictures! Books! Doors! Railings! We found a lot of things.
When we came back to the classroom, I remarked that we had found out that we use trees in so many different ways that we'd have an awfully hard time getting by, at church and in our houses, if there were no trees. Then I told them we were going to learn about some other ways that trees are used. We read The Great Kapok Tree, a beautiful picture book about a man who falls asleep in the middle of cutting down a rainforest tree. While he sleeps, the different animals and insects of the rainforest come down and whisper in his ear about why they need the tree. They ask him not to cut it down. When he wakes up, he drops his axe and walks out of the forest.
I summed up the class so far by saying that we can do many, many valuable things with trees after we cut them down, but there are many important uses that all living things have for trees when they are still growing. We need to be careful not to use more trees than we really need.
Then it was art project time. We made leaf prints: we put leaves, veins-side up, on newspaper, painted them with thinned-down tempera paint, and then pressed construction paper over them to make prints. This was messy and fun. I was grateful that one parent showed up early, and stayed to help.
We finished up with snack, during which I recapped the important things we had learned about trees and we did a little more talking about things trees are useful for. Then we had a closing activity where we pretended to be different kinds of trees: a drooping willow, a tall pine tree, an oak with spreading branches, an apple tree being shook to make the apples fall, a Christmas tree being decorated.
It was fun. I'm going to miss teaching, over the summer.
This week was another tree-themed lesson. Last week, the class went to visit their class tree. After our chalice lighting, we started out this morning by looking at pictures of the tree and talking about how it looked in springtime. Then I asked them to tell me about the kinds of things that people do with trees. Plant and water them, they suggested. Do people make things out of trees? They weren't quite sure.
I had set up a little display of objects on a side table, and I gathered them around it. There were: maple leaves, maple seeds, an orange, a bottle of maple syrup, a rubber band, a couple of tea bags, some tissues, a newspaper, a book, a wooden clothespin, a pencil, a paintbrush with a wooden handle, and a small wooden train on a piece of wooden track. I asked them if anything on the table came from trees. Right away, they pointed out the leaves, seeds, and (after some hesitation) the orange.
"Everything on this table comes to us from a tree," I said. They laughed, thinking I was joking. "Not a book! That doesn't come from a tree." (Actual quote!) We went through and talked about how each item on the table originally came from a tree. Then I told them that we were going to be tree detectives. ("Does anyone know what a detective is?" "It's a person who figures things out.") We took a walk, or actually a madcap run, through the RE building and the Parish Hall, looking for things made from trees. Tables! Chairs! Corkboard! Pictures! Books! Doors! Railings! We found a lot of things.
When we came back to the classroom, I remarked that we had found out that we use trees in so many different ways that we'd have an awfully hard time getting by, at church and in our houses, if there were no trees. Then I told them we were going to learn about some other ways that trees are used. We read The Great Kapok Tree, a beautiful picture book about a man who falls asleep in the middle of cutting down a rainforest tree. While he sleeps, the different animals and insects of the rainforest come down and whisper in his ear about why they need the tree. They ask him not to cut it down. When he wakes up, he drops his axe and walks out of the forest.
I summed up the class so far by saying that we can do many, many valuable things with trees after we cut them down, but there are many important uses that all living things have for trees when they are still growing. We need to be careful not to use more trees than we really need.
Then it was art project time. We made leaf prints: we put leaves, veins-side up, on newspaper, painted them with thinned-down tempera paint, and then pressed construction paper over them to make prints. This was messy and fun. I was grateful that one parent showed up early, and stayed to help.
We finished up with snack, during which I recapped the important things we had learned about trees and we did a little more talking about things trees are useful for. Then we had a closing activity where we pretended to be different kinds of trees: a drooping willow, a tall pine tree, an oak with spreading branches, an apple tree being shook to make the apples fall, a Christmas tree being decorated.
It was fun. I'm going to miss teaching, over the summer.