IYKMM Park Day Nature Zone

[00:00:00] Speaker A: 54321. Thank you, nature, son, and everybody else. [00:00:10] Speaker B: A big and yourselves, a round of applause. [00:00:18] Speaker C: Thank you for this gift for park day kids, now and in the future. You have touched the future. Thank you, major love. [00:00:31] Speaker A: If you really knew me if you really knew me if you really knew me? [00:00:36] Speaker C: If you really knew me you would know. [00:00:38] Speaker A: Hey, who are you? [00:00:40] Speaker D: Who, me? [00:00:41] Speaker A: Yeah, you. It's Monday. Hello and welcome to if you knew me Mondays, a student powered park day podcast that builds belonging by sharing stories from the margins of our schooling community. Say what? My name is Shyla. And if you really knew me, you would know that I have a big brother named Uvie. My name is Janai. And if you really knew me, you would know I have a cat named Lynx. Hi, my name is Ellis. And if you really knew me, I have a fish named Goldie. Hi, my name is Eleni. And if you really knew me, I have a little brother. [00:01:28] Speaker E: Hi, my name is Judah. And if you really knew me, I have a sister named June. [00:01:36] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Luca and I have a little sister. Her name is Carla. By the way, we're all kindergarteners. On today's episode, we're gonna be sharing all about our nature zone project. We're going to hear from students and teachers and all kinds of people, and they'll help tell the story of what the kindergarten nature zone project is, why we did it, and why it's important to our school. Thank you for tuning in. Now let's get started by hearing from our teachers, Victoria and Paola. They're going to tell you what inspired this project in the first place. [00:02:17] Speaker D: Hi, my name is Victoria, and I teach kindergarten here at Park Day school. Hi, my name is Paola. At the beginning of the school year, before school started, we had a three day PBL training where we learned about project based learning and what that looked like. We thought about how this would fit into our community project and learning about how to be a part of community. As they first enter into kindergarten, we had a really deep conversation about how, like, we wanted to do something outside of the box, something that still connected with community and what a community looks like and how we work together as a community, but something different. So we actually started learning about classrooms first, what makes a classroom, who's in a classroom? What materials do you need? Then we imagined what it'd be like to have an outdoor classroom. And we thought about what that could look like. Who would be there, what materials would be there, what would the space, the boundaries look like, what would some agreements be? And then we actually took a field trip to Blake Garden, which originally inspired the nature zone to begin with. And we got to play in the nature zone at Blake Garden. We had a conversation about how we noticed not a lot of people were using the nature zone or not a lot of people even knew that the nature zone existed, because a lot of kids actually come in to kindergarten. They're new. Families might not know about it. So we were like, how can we bring the nature zone so that everybody in the community can learn about it and use that space? A lot of the things we do here is based on nature. I mean, we have a beautiful campus, right, that it's nature offers so much on an everyday basis, and so. So we really just wanted to create a project where kids brought together a nature zone and made it look the way that they wanted to. We drew and ideated on what would be an amazing outdoor nature zone here on campus. They drew it, they designed it using natural materials. And then with the help of lots of people, we helped collect materials for the nature zone. It was a very community based project where we all worked together, and so there was a lot of different ideas put into it, and now it came into fruition. So we're so excited to have the space here again and open for everyone on campus to use. We're so excited. [00:04:30] Speaker A: We started out by doing a KWL activity. That means we made a list about all of the things we already know about classrooms. That's the k. Then, for w. We made a list of all the things we want to know is about everything we learned during the project. We added a lot to this list over time. Classrooms have tails. They have letters. [00:05:06] Speaker D: Does anyone have anything else that they would like to know about classrooms? Last call. Maybe close your eyes for 10 seconds and really think about what is something that you wonder about classrooms. What is something you would really, really love to know? [00:05:21] Speaker A: Why do classrooms sometimes have stuffy? Why they have teachers? [00:05:28] Speaker D: That's a great question, Shila. [00:05:31] Speaker A: Why do they have books? [00:05:33] Speaker D: Why do we have books? [00:05:35] Speaker A: Okay, why do you want. [00:05:38] Speaker D: Ooh. Why do you need to learn? Why do you need to learn in classrooms? [00:05:52] Speaker E: After talking about the purpose of a classroom and all of the different things inside of them, we got to use our imagination and design our own dream classroom. [00:06:06] Speaker D: In the morning, Fola already went over what we're doing for today, and we're doing table work. Today's table work is to design your dream classroom. So if you could have a classroom, whatever you wanted, who would be there? What would be in your classroom? What would it look like? What would it have? I want to hear some of your ideas. Thank you, Harpeezy. Ernest. Oh, so you would want a lot in your dream classroom. I love that. Flowers and plants, animals. Flowers and plants. That's entries. Wow. So when I say design, what does design mean? Does anyone know that word? Juno? [00:06:57] Speaker A: Make something. [00:06:58] Speaker D: Make something. Designing something means you could draw it, make a plan in order to make it come to life. And designing means you think in your head what you want something to look like. So today you're gonna draw whatever dream classroom you would want. Okay. Then you're gonna build it. Say what? [00:07:23] Speaker A: What? [00:07:24] Speaker D: We have a lot of materials out. You can go shopping and you can choose items to build your dream classroom. Now, it's going to be kind of tricky to build, like a chocolate classroom, but you have to think, is your shape of your classroom going to be a circle? Is the shape of your classroom going to be a square? Is the shape of your classroom going to be a triangle or a rectangle? You need a shape of a classroom. Will it have windows? Will it have doors? What will your class, will it have a roof? Will it not have a room? Not necessarily. Remember, this is your dream classroom. So your dream classroom can have anything that you want. You have ten minutes to draw and design. Juno, what would be in your dream classroom? [00:08:21] Speaker A: Plants and trees. And it would look like a forest or a jungle. [00:08:28] Speaker F: What about you, Tooby? [00:08:29] Speaker A: And I'm gonna make a class and I'm growing a classroom with planets and stuff. And that will hang from a loft and jump down from the loft. [00:08:43] Speaker D: I love that. So you have a loft in yours? Class? [00:08:48] Speaker B: Class. [00:08:48] Speaker A: Yes. Don't forget to write your name at. [00:08:51] Speaker D: The very top, please and thank you. Eleni, what would your dream classroom look like? [00:08:56] Speaker A: Like a castle. [00:08:59] Speaker D: Tell me about this outdoor dream classroom you have. [00:09:02] Speaker A: There's lots of stuff. [00:09:04] Speaker D: Like what? [00:09:05] Speaker A: Anything that's in nature. [00:09:09] Speaker D: You said you wanted a river. [00:09:11] Speaker A: No, this is a watering pool. [00:09:13] Speaker D: See, it has a closing. Okay. Anything else? [00:09:17] Speaker A: Well, there's gonna be flowers. Unicorn? No unicorns. But there's going to be apples. There's like a tree full of apples. And there'll be butterflies. [00:09:36] Speaker D: Ooh, love that. [00:09:38] Speaker A: And you can make anything out of a craft, out of any craft, out of nature. [00:09:44] Speaker D: So basically you like your outdoor space. You want people to just create whatever they want? [00:09:49] Speaker A: Yes, out of nature. [00:09:51] Speaker D: Oh, that's awesome. [00:09:52] Speaker A: And you can eat the apple. I'm drawing what it looks like. So basically there's, that's a table and then a chair. [00:10:00] Speaker D: Ah. So you would create workspaces, except there's. [00:10:05] Speaker A: No, like, doors or any of that thing. Mine has a string and a little mess and ferns. My outdoor classroom is surrounded by a rainbow umbrella. [00:10:21] Speaker D: Gigi, do you want to say anything about yours? [00:10:23] Speaker A: It's a hammock. [00:10:25] Speaker D: A hammock. [00:10:28] Speaker A: Okay. [00:10:29] Speaker D: That was just your time to finish your drawing. So to wrap up. Shiloh, take your time, but we gotta start building soon. [00:10:38] Speaker A: As you heard, a lot of us design nature into our dream classrooms. And some of us even designed an outdoor classroom. Since it's fun to play outside. We got inspiration from everywhere and even went on a field trip to Blake Garden in Berkeley. Talk about an outdoor learning garden. We learned so much there. Here's a small example. [00:11:03] Speaker B: This place was created at the same time as the Golden Gate bridge was built. [00:11:11] Speaker A: That's the voice of golden manager Catherine Lincoln. She was the host on our visit and had so much to show these the people. [00:11:20] Speaker B: Anita and Anton Blake bought this property, which just looked like a field of nothing, like a field of grass. And then they took it and made it into this beautiful garden. And one of the things that they wanted to highlight in their garden was the view of the golden gate. So that is what was very important to them at the time, because Anton Blake, the man who owned this place, he built roads for a living. So he was very excited that there was going to be a road crossing the water and connecting people together. Okay. Connecting lives. This area is much more natural, right, than the one that we saw with the square and the paths that were square. This is now more of a woodland. Right? A meandering place, a place where you might find even more insects. And this place is called our pollinator garden. Does anybody know what a pollinator is? Pollinator is a kind of insect or animal creature that pollinates. Yes. You guys are talking about seeds in school, where seeds come from. Seeds come from two plants that were pollinated. And who are some of the. Can anyone name a pollinator? [00:12:46] Speaker A: Bees. [00:12:48] Speaker B: Bees. Butterflies. [00:12:52] Speaker A: Honey. Birds. [00:12:54] Speaker B: Birds. Birds are pollinators. Lots of different insects are pollinators, and they don't necessarily do it by poking their little beak inside of a flower like you traditionally think of a pollinator. Sometimes they just walk across a flower and they get sticky stuff on their feet. And then that sticky stuff goes to the other flower, and then, voila, that flowers been pollinated and it can make a seed. Now, who said butterfly? One of you. All right. Butterflies are very important pollinators, and their babies are called caterpillars. Caterpillars and this garden is filled with caterpillars because we planted it specifically to make it a home for monarch butterfly caterpillars. And if we go over here to these plants that are called milkweeds, we might. [00:13:55] Speaker A: Let's see. [00:13:55] Speaker B: That looks like goo on a spider web. Spiders are also pollinators. [00:14:00] Speaker A: After this fun field trip, we met with other community members to get ideas before we started building our own nature zone classroom. It turns out there used to be a nature zone at park day years ago. Some of the kids who played and learned there are now in 8th grade. We interviewed them along with our facilities director, Jennifer Cooper. Here's Jennifer now. [00:14:25] Speaker F: Good morning, everybody. I'm so happy to be here this morning because I heard some news about some exciting project that was happening outside by the yurt, the nature zone. And the nature zone has a really warm spot in my heart because many years ago, I helped to make the nature zone with the kindergarten teacher who was here named Amita. Did you guys go to blake gardens? [00:14:57] Speaker G: Isn't it a cool place? [00:14:59] Speaker F: I went back and I was trying to remember when I went to blake gardens, and I found a picture of me and my daughter when she was in kindergarten, and she's now in college. [00:15:15] Speaker D: Wow. [00:15:17] Speaker F: So long time ago. We were up in blake gardens, too, and we got really inspired with what we saw there and what all the kids got to make. Did you guys make cool things there? [00:15:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:30] Speaker F: One of the amazing things about park day school that I love and why I like to work here is our amazing gardens, outdoor spaces, and the nature zone, I think, is going to become one of those again. Right? It's a place where we can use all of these things from nature, like sticks and leaves, sometimes flowers, branches, and make amazing creations. And you know what? We've got a lot of those things here on our campus. So I can't wait to see what you guys are going to make with all of those things. Some of the people that work with me named hannah and Yi bong, who are the gardeners here on campus, they know about your plans, and they are excited about gathering some of those natural materials so that you guys can use them in the nature zone. And I hear maybe some of your families are bringing in maybe some things, too. [00:16:30] Speaker A: My name is Noah, and what was the kid's favorite thing to build with in the nature zone? [00:16:38] Speaker F: So over the years, many different materials have been used in the nature zone, like some of the palm fronds that you guys asked about. I think some other things are making designs on the stumps. I remember, like, kids using flowers and. [00:16:58] Speaker A: Leaves, the 8th graders had a bunch of memories from when they were in the nature zone. My name is Jonah, and when I was in kindergarten, the nature zone was an area behind the gardening yurt where full of just sticks and wood chips where we could build and play. My name is Alice, and my question is, what did the nature zone look like, and what did you do in the nature zone? [00:17:34] Speaker D: You could build a whole bunch of things in the nature zone, and you could basically do anything that you wanted or anything that you made up. [00:17:44] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Juby, and my question is, was there any structures in the nature zone? [00:17:52] Speaker H: Hi, my name is Eloise, and in the nature zone, there were some structures. There was logs, like stumps, and there was oftentimes, like, a fort that some other group had built before you got there. [00:18:06] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Alicia. And were there any birds in the nature zone? [00:18:12] Speaker H: Yes, there was birds in the nature zone. They'd usually just be higher in the trees. [00:18:17] Speaker A: What kinds of animals were there in the nature zone? [00:18:21] Speaker D: Hi, I'm Leilani, and they were a. [00:18:23] Speaker A: Bunch of different kinds of animals, like squirrels and birds. Like she said, in the trees everywhere. [00:18:28] Speaker E: You could build a lot of different things. But what I remember building was a lot of, like, forts and, like, houses. And, like someone said, like, there's already normally something built and you could just add on to it. Well, there was an archway to the entrance of it, and people would add flowers and different decorations on it. [00:18:43] Speaker G: My name's Janine, and I remember being here when the nature zone was first built. And I remember there were some ways that the materials were organized for people to use. [00:18:56] Speaker H: Materials were organized into different bins made out of wood, and there would be, like, bamboo, long bamboo rods that went in one and then, like, short leafs that went in another. [00:19:10] Speaker D: So we were wondering, how did the nature zone come about? Who created it? How was it brought to park day school? [00:19:17] Speaker G: So that is a really good question. That happened around the same time that I was starting to work at park day school. And the teacher, one of the kindergarten teachers at that time, was named Amita, and she was really, really interested in the idea after she went to Blake Garden, and she thought park day school would be a perfect place to have a nature zone where kids can build things with materials from nature and have the same kind of experience that they can have at Blake Garden. [00:19:49] Speaker D: That's amazing. Well, hopefully, we'll have our nature zone here so they can enjoy it, too. Okay. Well, thank you, 8th graders, so much for coming we really appreciate you being here and answering all of our questions. Does anyone have an appreciation for an 8th grader for coming in? [00:20:06] Speaker A: Thank you for telling me that the nature zone head structures. Thank you for telling us about the nature zone. [00:20:17] Speaker H: I appreciate all of the kindergarteners for trying to bring back the fun thing that we lost because of COVID After. [00:20:25] Speaker A: These conversations, we were really inspired and ready to build. We gathered natural materials and got busy. It was so much fun. [00:20:37] Speaker E: Making the nature zone was probably the most fun of all. We combined all of our ideas and natural materials and made it special space for everyone at park day to use. [00:20:53] Speaker D: We're a community, so what you collected in the basket was actually for all of us to use. So we're gonna share and you're gonna choose materials you want from our baskets and choose a space to build your dream outdoor classroom. Choose wherever you want to build. So, Alicia, what are you excited about for the nature zone? [00:21:15] Speaker A: I'm excited to build, and I'm really excited to play in the nature zone. I'm excited to build amazing structures. And I think some roles in the nature zone that we should have is no fun throwing stuff in people's faces. [00:21:32] Speaker D: Anything else you'd like to share? [00:21:34] Speaker A: Yes. When we cut the ribbon, there's usually a bow tied to it. And then you cut it, but you cut the bow off. I'm excited about having a ribbon cut to open the nature zone so we can play. [00:21:53] Speaker D: What are you all working on over here to get ready for the nature zone? [00:21:57] Speaker A: We're building. [00:21:58] Speaker D: You don't have to yell. [00:22:00] Speaker A: We're building. [00:22:01] Speaker D: You don't have. Just talk regular. [00:22:03] Speaker A: We're building a tent for alice right now. I'm making the floor. We're making a loom loompa house. And look, there's a bug. Get it off. That's a wall for the oompa Loompas. [00:22:17] Speaker D: What's wrong with bugs? Bugs are gonna be in the nature zone. [00:22:21] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. It's okay, little buggy. You can be a pet. For the oomph. We are working on a ribbon that everything that you'll see in the nature zone is only made out of nature. Please do not bring plastic to the nature zone. It's off limits. No smoking in the nature zone. Especially a space so special deserves a grand opening. So that's exactly what we did. We invited Karen, our lower school director, and Angela, the park day head of school, to give a speech and cut the ribbon we made out of leaves. It was a fitting ending to a fun experience. [00:23:22] Speaker C: So kindergarten, I have been here at park day for four years. And when I got here, I heard about this nature zone, but it wasn't as beautiful as it is now. So I heard that as a part of your project, kindergarten recreated the majesty and the grandeur of the park day nature zone. Can you give yourselves a round of applause? [00:23:57] Speaker F: I am so proud of you for getting the nature zone back together and for learning all about it. And I can't wait to see you in there enjoying it. [00:24:07] Speaker D: Before we cut it, we wanted to see if any kindergarteners would like to say something they're excited. Excited about. [00:24:12] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Bo, and I'm excited to see all of the beautiful stuff other people build it in the nature zone. Now, every time I pass by the nature zone, I feel proud of all the great walk we did. Once again, we made the nature zone for everyone at polk day. So when you get a chance, be sure to stop by and spend some time in the nature zone yourself. You can find some bug to add your own ideas to this space. Maybe we'll even see you there. [00:24:45] Speaker C: Are we ready? Kindergarten. [00:24:47] Speaker D: Waterfall. Waterfall. [00:24:51] Speaker C: Okay. On the count of ten, I will cut the ribbon, and then the nature zone will be open for all to enjoy. Can you whisper count down from ten with me? [00:25:06] Speaker D: Ten. [00:25:08] Speaker A: 8765-4321 well, friends, that's it for now. We hope you enjoyed our story. Thanks for listening. Oh, thank you to everybody who helped make the nature zone possible, say nature zone on 3123. Nature zone. [00:25:36] Speaker D: Get in the zone. [00:25:41] Speaker H: Oda. [00:25:42] Speaker A: Wait a minute. [00:25:43] Speaker I: We want to give a shout out to Zach pines, without whom this would not have been possible. You inspired us at Blake gardens, and you led us to this wonderful space that we brought back. So thank you, Zach, for all of that. And we can't wait to see what happens with this and to keep an eye on what you're doing, spreading the word of nature zone and building with nature around the world.