On a sunny June day, grade 3 students of A.G. Bell traveled down the wooden path

On a sunny June day, the grade 3 students of A.G. Bell traveled down the wooden path

As a museum educator I get to do the job I love. I came to realize that on each trip, there is something for me to learn also. I observe how much the students enjoy using their five senses and see our day as one of discovery and exploration. I hoped for reflection as that is what a museum means, a place to reflect. Off we went down the path, and I asked the class I was leading to stop and look at the root growth at the base of the cedar trees, and observe the plants they might consider if they themselves had travelled back in time and were the children in a settler family. For the day, they would be all brothers and sisters with chuckles of amusement. 

We pat the horse-tail fern that is bending behind a wood trail fence toward our feet. It is one of the oldest plants and was used as a pot-scrubber by the pioneers. It feels hard and rubbery yet soft and grows near water, making it handy and available to anyone washing dishes near water.  We pass to the bridge over Duffins Creek, and turn left to come up to the lean-to-camp. It is a place to show where settlers would stop on their way to locating their assigned land lot and build their first home. 

Our class heads into the deep woods with cedar and walnut trees. The walnut shell is used by settlers to dye their wool fabric brown, an easy colour to manage in their environment. My own apron, I show them, is the same brown of the walnut’s dye. We stop to build a small shanty, and demonstrate how to build with notched logs with this small-scale model. We work in teams of two, lifting the logs, and the idea of a ‘building bee’ is learned where everyone helps to build a structure and many hands make light work.

Before reaching the shanty building area, I involve the children in reflecting, by asking them to think as artists and sculptors, and look at their surroundings like Emily Carr may have. Can they see how nature can inspire creativity in them? I remember my own art study days at Sheridan College. Our drawing class went on a bus trip to draw the Cheltenham Badlands near Belfountain in Caledon, Ontario. As college art students we drew the erosion-shaped red clay formations, and our bus later stopped at a mill in ruin. This experience stood out for me, and I see the students’ Pickering Museum Village experience on this day through the same eyes. The opportunity to do sketches for many types of art is here. 

In the beginning of our tour, I involve students of all ages to think about whether they enjoy music. Almost all answer ‘yes.’ Then I ask them to think about the spelling of music and museum and what is the same in the first three letters. M U S. Take it a step further and add the fourth letter of the word, museum: M U S E. To muse is to be guided by an inner voice. Have they ever made something, and found themselves listening to an inner voice? It is the same thing that we strive for in reflecting on the lives of people over time in the history museum. A history museum connects man with the environment by the objects created to mediate with their environment, over time. 

When I was speaking to the class about the similarities between ‘muse, music and museums’ on this June day I was stopped in my tracks. I will never forget the moment of spontaneous music created by these children from Alexander Graham Bell Public School from Ajax. The class was almost finished building the shanty, just a few children disassembling the logs and putting them on the ground, when I heard clapping. There were three groups, children in pairs clapping out a rhyme and saying the matching words in a song. It had begun as one group and spread to three by the time my attention was caught. 

I asked the children to continue but this time not saying a word. What could we hear in the woods? After a minute their teacher, Ms Daley, said she could hear the sound of fire. She was right. I could hear the sound of rain, clapping rain. 

Music-museum-muse. A moment of spontaneous creativity was born and wonderful to see and hear with children standing in the cedar woods by the shanty. 

By Kathie Vanular, Senior Outreach and a museum memory in the Spring 2010