Fostering Place with Sit Spots

Over the summer, we set the school-wide intention fostering place, inspired by the works of Ann Pelo and the Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature. In her article, A Pedagogy for Ecology, Pelo lies out the following steps to connecting with a place when working with young children.

• Walk the land – slow down and continue to revisit the same spaces
• Learn the names – knowing what things (plants, animals, etc) are called builds a sense of intimacy.
• Embrace the senses – How does the air feel on your skin? What can you hear? Smell?
• Explore new perspectives – continue to find surprise and delight in a familiar place
• Learn the stories – invite the children’s conjectures to compliment the scientific facts
• Tell the stories – link children’s lives to the natural world – “You’ll start Kindergarten in the fall when the blackberries are ripe”

In the Copper Room, the teachers used this inspiration to establish a daily “Sit Spot” with their classroom. We are incredibly fortunate to have so many natural spaces here at PSA. When we look out of the Copper Room windows, we can often see squirrels running, bumblebees buzzing in the bushes, and monarch butterflies searching for milkweed to lay their eggs on. 

Each morning after our play time, we take one quiet minute to gather in our Sit Spot and notice our surroundings. Right away, the children have noticed things like bird songs and nests, insects crawling through the cracks between the bricks, a chipmunk hiding in the hydrangeas, and the sound of the leaves rustling through the trees. We even spotted a monarch butterfly flying through!

Floorbooks are a compilation of children’s ideas shown through transcriptions of conversations, stories, drawings, labels, photographs and other relevant media that show children’s thinking on a topic. We used Floorbooks to compile the children’s thoughts about their “expert spots” and the stories and wonderings they have about them. Floorbooks offer children an authentic way to create documentation of their discoveries and wonderings. While the teacher may transcribe their words or ask thought-provoking questions, the rest is all their own.

Our Floorbooks are housed in our classroom Investigation Station. They hang on clips in order to give easy access for adding new pages. As new pages get added, the children share them with each other during our whole group reflection meetings. Each Floorbook topic has a drawer dedicated to it where photos taken throughout the week await being put onto a page. The children have enjoyed looking at their own and each others’ photographs.

Our Sit Spot has become a place from which we orient our natural observations. For example, one student noticed the first monarch butterfly in our Sit Spot.

TEACHER: Where did you see the monarch?
STUDENT: Behind the Honey Locust tree!

The children are genuinely becoming excited when they make observations about both their own and each others’ “expert areas.” It is our hope that, over the course of the summer, they will begin to notice the unique interactions that occur in this space between the plants, animals, and insects that call it home, and, how we fit into it as people.

We wanted a way to visually show these connections, so, at our picnic table last week, we began creating a map by looking at the non-natural things around us – the green roof pavilion, the “bouncy thingamajigger”, the green bars, the Sunshine Room’s picnic table, the “Investigation Station” window, etc. Looking at our space in this way has helped us anchor ourselves into our area and reflect on how we have most often interacted with it as people. Then, we started to think about the natural elements that we are becoming experts at observing and added those to our map using colorful dot stickers and dashed lines to show movement where applicable. We have revisited this map a few times over the last couple of weeks adding details along the way as the children have made new observations or have noticed changes in the space.  

The children began to illustrate their expertise items. We used a process the children were familiar with, placing transparencies over photographs which the children trace over. We have found that this style of illustration has helped them look closer at their subject, noticing both the larger shapes and the smaller details, something that is trickier to do with an observational drawing. Their observations are added to their Floorbooks.

One student spent almost her whole Free Choice time working with a teacher to create illustrations of the male and female House Sparrows and even began to add labels to the parts of the sparrow she noticed were different colors.

Monarchs are always a big part of PSA in the summer. After weeks of caring for the caterpillars, we finally had our first butterfly! The children enjoyed observing the monarchs in her enclosure and we had conversations about why it was important to let her go. Our student in-house monarch expert, studied photos of a male and female monarch butterfly and determined that ours was a female since there were no black spots on her bottom wings. 

For many of the things the children are becoming experts on in our Sit Spot space, we are learning the importance of being still and quiet in order to observe them.

Student: I think the birds aren’t coming to the feeder when we’re in Investigation Station. They see us and they fly away.

We have been so impressed by the children’s capabilities for wonder and awe through our time in our Sit Spot. The attunement to our areas of expertise has brought us opportunities to experience reverence.

Our Art Specialists spend time on the playground as well. One week, the children were invited to make ornaments with air-dry clay and natural elements. We offered items for the children that were their area of expertise to see if it provoked any new observations. One student said “I’m happy that I’m doing this for my expert spot, but I’m also sad I’m picking one of my expert leaves.” Because he cares about it he has reverence for it, because he has reverence for it, he wants to advocate for it. Isn’t this the ultimate goal? What we want for all living things? 

Empathy and reverence are easy for the beautiful and/or cuddly. Who wouldn’t be in awe of the transformation and beauty of a monarch or the sweetness of a weeks-old baby bunny hiding amongst the hostas? But, what about the other creatures we encounter daily? The ones that the children come running over to show their teachers? The ones found under rotting logs or the black fabric edging around the sandbox? Luckily, we have a few experts of these creepy crawlies in the Copper Room. 

It didn’t take long for us all to notice that one of our students LOVES worms (even if he’s a little nervous about holding them.) We find him every day with friends, taking a peek under the black fabric edging around the woodchips. So far, he’s found many worms, rollie pollies, and even a few stag beetles!

One day, he was so excited to show his teachers a worm that it broke in two pieces as he was rushing it over to us. Thankfully, the great thing about worms is that, even if accidents like that happen, they can still survive! It was a good learning opportunity for all of us to practice gentleness with the creatures we find.

Our two resident rollie pollie experts, have spent the whole year practicing reverence for these types of creatures. They even had their own Sit Spot on the side hill during the school year that they would return to every day to make discoveries in the mud and dirt. And, they can often be found exploring together on the hill in the meadow after school.

Our sit spot became a place we lived in this summer. We have become experts on the creatures that inhabit it, plants that grow (or invade), and traffic that tends to pass through.  We are so impressed with our ecological experts! No matter where they go, they bring a sense of curiosity, patience, and reverence when exploring outdoors. Over time, they have gotten to know the creatures, big and small, in their surroundings and hold respect for each of them.

Reflection by Amanda Lautenbach and Mickey Willis, Copper Room Co-Teachers