Day 91

April Fool's Day in our school is called Poisson d'Avril, which is a French tradition on this day and involves children trying their best to stick a paper fish on someone's back without their knowledge.  No one quite knows why a fish, but it might have something to do with the end of the zodiac sign of Pisces, and the beginning of the new astrological year.

Some people hate having the fish, because it implies that you are so stupid you don't even feel when someone touches your back.  But some take it as a point of honour.  I had a whole backful one year, just decided to see how many I could get, but this year there was only one and a kind child told me about it and took it off for me.. 

Nick was the only one to play a trick on us, but he also did it after the noon deadline so it didn't really count! (although he did give me a huge fright!)
Virgin Atlantic had a lovely prank today.

There is a company which is encouraging people to take the 30-day challenge and rewild your life.  I suppose this does not really qualify as a natural thing as opposed to a man-made thing, but today this is what I am going to talk about.  The challenge involves going into a natural place, or even just a little back garden, and spending time with trees and sunshine, or rain, or walking on a windy day.  Thirty minutes is specified, in order to re-connect with our wildness, which we sometimes forget.

I have decided to do this with my advisory group, a little group of 7th graders, so today when they arrived in the Art room I said, "Ok, let's go!" and they followed me blithely, like those children followed the pied piper (except that I am not a horrible weird person dressed in a nightie getting revenge on the town of Hamelin).

I led them downstairs and out of the door, and toward the main road.  They were all chattering away and so happy to be out on this bright sunny day without coats or gloves!  It was beautiful.  I asked one of the boys to press the button for the pedestrian crossing which he did very ceremoniously, and then we all hurtled across the road like lolloping puppies, the stunned stationary cars looking on.  We were on a path which leads down to a little stream, like a canal really, and suddenly they all took off, running like the wind, just because there was a long stretch, just like dogs on the beach.

We only have twenty minutes, so I walked for 9 minutes, during which time most of the boys found themselves big staff-like sticks and carried them for varying times, and in the beginning the girls walked behind me and wondered what we were doing, but thought it was very "cool" anyway.  We went and looked at the little river, which no one knew the name of, until one girl tried out, "Alewife Brook"? and she was right.   One girl commented on the smell, like "those stones you rub together to create light", a fact which we learned about quartz on a 4-day camp at Nature's Classroom.  Perhaps it was the newly-warm sun striking a pile of stony gravel which might have had quartz in it, but what a great observation, what a good nose!

And then we turned around so that I could get them back to school in time for French class, and a game of tag began, and I stood at the end of the path where it meets the main road and felt very powerful as I held out my arms in a Christ-like gesture and all seven of these joyful creatures came to a laughing stop and kind of hung on and around me.

And on Friday maybe we will talk about what made it such a jubilant little interlude, and do something else just as delightful!