Beginnings

Something set me off one fall about the way my sons’ school was teaching about the seasons, portraying fall as an ending, a time of death. So I devised a program that I delivered to the Kindergarten kids about fall. The point was that fall was not really about the end or about death but was about beginnings, because it was in the fall that plants make seeds for the next generation. I spent days gathering seeds and seedpods and cones and nuts and berries and fruits and seedheads and the kids and I sat in a circle on the floor while I talked about the different kinds of seeds and how seeds are dispersed (wind, via an animal’s digestive system, water, being propelled from the parent plant, stored by an animal and forgotten, sticking to an animal’s fur or feathers, and so on). I let them touch and feel and poke and disassemble and squish. It was a pretty messy program but the kids loved it and I hope it gave them some optimism about the cycle of the seasons and some good perspective on how the end of one plant leads to the potential for future plants and that it really is indeed a cycle of life.