Our Niche In Our Neighborhood
3/19/24
Habitat is where an organism makes their home. All the things that an organism needs to survive are within their habitat. For the kids, we talk about this in terms of what a plant or an animal needs. For a plant - water, soil, sunlight, space to grow. For an animal - water, food, shelter, and the space to find the other three things.
We make a chart together for what an animal needs. It’s something we’ve talked about quite a bit and we refer back to all the time. Knowing what an animal needs, identifying their habitat, is the basis of all ecological knowledge, so we really try to come back to it all the time. “This is the roly poly’s home, his mommy and his daddy and everything he needs to survive are here, so he needs to stay here too.”
As we have become a part of the neighborhood, I have begun thinking about it as our habitat. Every organism in a habitat has a role to play, their niche in the habitat. The grass grows and holds the soil in place. The bunnies eat the grass. The fox eats the bunny. All necessary and important niches in the habitat of our neighborhood.
I had been mostly thinking about our niche as bringers of joy to the neighborhood habitat. So many of the people that we see are so glad to see us. The people at the coffee truck wave at the babies as Alexis strolls by with them. The toddlers and the preschoolers greet everyone as we walk through our neighborhood. The mail carrier goes out of his way to wave at us and to respond to our chorus of greetings. The garbage collectors honk and wave at us. Other walkers smile and wave and call hello. So many people are so genuinely happy to see us.
A few times we have encountered people in need of help. Sometimes, they will ask us where something is. Sometimes, they will drop something and we’ll pick it up. Sometimes, they are looking for a lost animal and we’ll say we can keep an eye out for it. Sometimes, they are looking for the food pantry behind the coffee truck and we can tell them where it is.
We got to fill up the food pantry a couple of times with donations from one of my dear ones. We really liked doing this, but the kids have recognized that most of the time when we check it, it doesn’t have any food in it. This is concerning to the kids. They are concerned that the people in need that we encounter might not get what they need. Which means that our niche, bringer of joy, is not fulfilled for those people.
The other teachers and I have talked about this & we really want to help. We recognize that one of the things that we produce in abundance is artwork. This group of kids loves to paint and bead. So we have been collecting paintings and bracelets. Ms. Krystal cut a bunch of the paintings to bookmark size, put Sprouts School stickers on them, and laminated them. Ms. Blanca figured out how to tie off the kids’ beading so that they have become bracelets. We are going to sell these treasures at the coffee truck. We’ll use the proceeds to buy food for the food pantry.
There is so much real world learning for us to do in this project. This week during circle time, we’re making our plan for this project. We’ll figure out what the most wanted foods in a food pantry are (that’s literacy). We’ll walk down to Natural Grocers to figure out how much the things we should stock in the food pantry cost (that’s gross motor + math + literacy). Then to make it easy for us, we’ll price our bookmarks and bracelets in terms of the cost of making them + the cost of an item or two or three that we’re going to stock (math). We’ll have to keep a count of what’s in the pantry (math). We’ll have to keep track of how many things we’ve sold and what that can buy (math + literacy + science). We’ll have to walk to Natural Grocers and buy the food to stock (gross motor + math + literacy + science). And I’m sure there’s even more that I haven’t thought of yet. I love this kind of learning for the kids. We aren’t just counting because it’s a math activity on the green shelves, we are counting to gain real information. We aren’t just matching labels because that’s a pre-reading activity on the red shelves, we need real information. And so on, you get the idea.
In addition we are really embracing our niche in the neighborhood as bringers of joy. We’ll have good news for those that ask us for help. Those that help us out by buying our handmade treasures will also get a little jolt of joy cause they’ll know they helped those who need help and as a bonus, they helped us learn.
We’re living into our niche in our neighborhood. Cause we’re a neighborhood nature school.
