We are smack dab in the middle of our school-wide ocean unit. Each grade level concentrates on a different marine habitat. Kinder-Rocky Seashore, First Grade-Tide Pools, Second Grade- Sandy Beach, Third Grade-Wetlands, Fourth Grade-Kelp Forest, Fifth Grade-Deep Ocean. Traditionally the school becomes awash in butcher paper depicting these amazing environments. Davis Elementary is absolutely famous for it. When I first visited Davis as a college student the campus was decked out in all its oceanic array and I was floored! Students made the most amazing art work, poetry, science projects, dioramas. It was fantastic. This year things are very different. Because the fire marshal inspected our school and discovered we needed to remove 80% of our paper from the walls the whole ocean unit was foiled. We are doing many of the same projects but we can't display them. We can only put out one or two at a time. It's so sad. Still, the kids have been working very hard researching their ocean animals, writing reports, couplets, cinquains, haiku, acrostics, alliterations, riddles, and bio poems. We've been painting sunsets, making collages on the computer, drawing diagrams, and creating dioramas. It's been fun.
It's only just occurred to me very lately, there really is a whole world out there. I know that sounds ridiculously oversimple, but what I mean is, I have been swimming around in my reality for so long, just thinking the way I've always thought, feeling the way I've typically felt and meanwhile there are sea slugs out there turning from male to female every day of the week! Yeah! Can you believe that? Sea snails and sea slugs are all born male. As they mature they evolve into females! What? What kind of crazy, wonderful, unexpected, weird world are we living in here? That's just one example out of millions lately. How can I be thinking about the same old stuff, i.e. why me??? jobs, love, school, blah, blah, blah, etc. etc., when there are sea stars turning their stomachs out of their mouths and devouring clams right this very moment? There are dolphins communicating volumes in chirps and whistles, crabs regenerating legs, sea horse daddies giving birth, and sea turtles laying their eggs on the very same beach fronts they hatched from. What a world! What a wonderful, unexpected, crazy, gorgeous, fantastic world we've got! And I don't even know a millionth of what really goes on. Something tells me things are vastly more amazing and interesting than my experiences up to now have indicated.
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