7/27/2015

Not a drop to drink

Water, water everywhere, and not a chance to think! Eight water-themed nature classes for kiddies in the next month, and a shortage of time to prepare, so I'm feeling a tad stressed. Wishing I had a tadpole or two to share Thursday morning for "Who Lives In the Water?" with preschoolers.

We will be able to make frog prints (yes, Cinderella, someday your prints will come), and rubber-stamp fishies and insects near the construction paper and muffin cup lily pad.

We will sing duck songs with the help of Raffi MP3 downloads, and a coworker with a ukelele. .
We will not sing "Have you seen the little ducks swimming in the water" with an Aussie accent*. It's good to outsource the singing! I could start a page for tone deaf tadpole teachers on facebook.

Standing under the shower faucet spray I tried to sort out the age-appropriate concepts for all the presentations while not getting soap in my eyes. Glad to know there are kiddie water-conservation gimme toothbrushes since washing hands and brushing teeth are major ways little kids can reduce consumption.

Growing up in the primitive post-Sputnik years, I learned about watersheds and volcanoes by playing with mashed potatoes and scram gravy. Grasping of geography and Nebraska history was dependent upon salt-water-flour maps shaped on shirt cardboard at the very last minute. The best way to learn physics and engineering concepts was to spend hot afternoons wading in a mud bottom creek when you visited Grandma. Giving a thunderstorm mindfulness was enhanced by a root beer float in a copper mug sitting inside the carport, or a chocolate peanut sundae in a tall glass while perched on the front stoop.

Plants need water and our brains do, too. Research shows our mood and attention are restored by time spent near ponds, lakes, creeks, and oceans no matter how old we are. Oh, to be eight years old walking barefoot to collect hailstones after a thunderstorm to store in the Frigidaire freezer.


* My musical little sister had an Australian preschool teacher, and sang this song with an accent 24/7 for a long time:


Have you seen the little ducks
Swimming in the water?
Mother, father, baby ducks,
Grand-mamma and daughter.

Have you seen them dip their bills,
Swimming in the water?
Mother, father, baby ducks,
Grand-mamma and daughter.

Have you seen them flap their wings,
Swimming in the water?
Mother, father, baby ducks,

Grand-mamma and daughter.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

2 comments:

seana graham said...

Not a drop to drink is kind of the subconscious fear of all Californians these days. I think we would like to have a good reason to sing the little duck song right about now.

Collagemama said...

We are finally out of our drought here, but I understand your fear.