BAYVIEW — The forest was waiting. There was the evergreen fort to finish building.
The group of children were unfazed by the cold and cloudy weather and ran ahead up the hill from the South Whidbey Tilth campus where the Calyx Community Arts School meets twice during its three-days-per-week schedule.
Eight-year-old Audrey Conlon announced that she would draw the imaginary door to gain entry into the forest.
“We draw the door and we ask if we can come in and if it says, ‘Yes,’ then we can go into the forest,” Audrey said.
“Listen to the wind, the trees will rustle,” she said.
Why ask the forest before entering?
“Because the forest wants to be treated nicely,” Audrey explained.
Audrey’s imagination and thoughtful respect for the woods is an active example of what Calyx founders Marta Mulholland and Lisa Kois had in mind when they began the school in October for children ages 4 to 8. The program is modeled on the “forest kindergarten” idea of an outdoor classroom, blended with an integrated Spanish language and arts curriculum.
“As you may know, the word ‘calyx’ comes to us from plant language and refers to the part of a flowering plant that holds and supports the bud as it grows and blossoms into a flower,” Kois said.
This “school without walls” takes its lead from the forest kindergartens which are more common in Europe, but catching on in America, and take place almost entirely outside, no matter the weather, to play, to explore and to learn in a forest or natural environment. Adult supervision is meant to assist rather than lead, encouraging children to make their own choices about play, while making sure they are safe.
Back in the woods, four students of varying ages gave a “Coyote Call” back to “Mother Coyote” — in this case, Eva Bistuer-Gibson, one of the lead teachers at the school and an artist who is a native of Spain and speaks mainly Spanish to the children.
“They spend seven to nine hours (per week) immersed in the language through different activities such as reading stories, singing songs, playing games and going on walks in the forest,” Bistuer-Gibson said.
The children led the way to the fort within a large Douglas fir, which was somewhat tilted and provided some natural shelter from its bending branches. They entered the fort with care.
Yovanna Ceron Cesar, a 4-year-old Spanish-speaking child who is learning English, picked up a small leafy branch nearby and began sweeping the forest floor of pine needles. She swept for at least 15 minutes, taking care to admonish her fellow fort dwellers to be careful where they stepped on her newly swept floor.
Audrey, meanwhile, was busy adding larger branches to the walls of the fort and gave direction to the others about the intricacies of fort architecture. All the children were familiar with the forest and explored its floor, the bark of its trees and listened closely when their teacher asked them what sounds they noticed.
Bistuer-Gibson spoke to each child in Spanish as they played. She had noticed a transformation in the children after only two weeks.
“I see all kinds of reactions. Some turn around looking for help from other adults, some run away from me,” she said.
“But little by little, I start to see changes — the language suddenly becomes something they are not afraid of anymore. They start to recognize some words and the learning starts, just like that. They don’t even know they are learning, but they are. For me that is priceless,” she added.
Playing outside for prolonged periods has been shown to have a positive effect on children’s development, particularly in the areas of balance and agility, manual dexterity, physical coordination, tactile sensitivity and depth perception.
Besides Bistuer-Gibson, there is a team of six other mentors, who include intern Hailey Johnson; park ranger Tess Cooper, who teaches the children about how to use their “owl eyes, deer ears, raccoon touch and dog nose” during their forays into South Whidbey State Park; Tilth leader Anza Muenchow, who
is teaching them how to grow a garden for food; Island Strings music teacher Linda Good, who teaches them violin, cello and other instruments; plus parent-teachers Kois and Mulholland. Five of the seven teachers are volunteers.
The original outside classrooms also extend the idea that children who learn how to handle themselves in the outdoors — learning the use of outdoor tools, for instance — will gain confidence from their affinity with nature.
These children were certainly in touch with the outside and after showing off some colorful paper bag mushrooms they had made and “planted” in the grass, they talked about an animal that had become the school mascot.
Kois’ 5-year-old daughter Aaliyah Kois Jacob said there is a pet vole, which lives under a large piece of wood near the garden. She pointed to it.
“We don’t know if he’s gotten eaten,” she said.
“If we open that platform, we see if he’s in there and if he’s in there, he’ll run to another hole. His name is Gracie Voley,” she said.
Bistuer-Gibson asked Aaliyah how she would describe him “en Español.”
“Raton de campo,” Aaliyah said with a perfect rolled “r” accent.
“There’s like 500 of them and if this guy got dead there’d be 400,” she added.
Not far from Gracie Voley’s home is the garden, where Muenchow hopes to have a hoop house for growing the children’s favorite crops, including carrots, strawberries and radishes. They have already planted trees for a wind break and some bulbs for early color and bee attraction.
While they work in the garden, Muenchow sings the plant part song with them in Spanish: “raices, tallos, hojas, floras, frutas y semillas, seis partes que todas necesitan.”
The vole didn’t seem to want to make an appearance, and it was time for music anyway.
Inside the small, cozy activity hut, Good was setting up various instruments and musical trinkets to show the children. Johnson repeated in Spanish all of what Good was talking about in English.
“I’m delighted to teach at Calyx, because I love teaching music to young students and I’m happy to review español,” Good said.
Good explained all the parts of some instruments she brought and some of their origins in the country in which they were made. The children were engaged and eager to see what was next on her list.
“My teaching over the years is based on the Suzuki philosophy as explained in ‘Nurtured By Love,’ where we assume that children want to learn,” Good said, who shares her love of teaching with her husband Leonard.
“In the 45 years that Leonard and I have lived on South Whidbey, we’ve taught at many private schools and in the districts and appreciate the parents and staff of Calyx working and experimenting to find an education to fit their needs,” she added.
Marrying an outside classroom to a bilingual arts curriculum is the school’s main thrust, but with that they hope to give the children tools for practical life.
Kois said that they strive to guide each child with a gentle hand through example and storytelling, through appreciating and thanks giving, through collaboration, genuine connection and with empathy. In this way, a student can learn in a natural way to think critically, to have compassion and delve into the creative process, she said.
“How we engage in creative process. How we are in the world, with others, with children, with the earth. This is hard work,” Kois said.
“We have no illusions that adults have all the answers. In fact, we believe that life and learning are in the questions,” she added. “So, we ask lots of questions. We ask them of ourselves, we ask them of the kids. Questions that make us think, wonder, explore, examine, create, and ask more questions.”
Like Kois, Mulholland wanted a school for her son, 4-year-old Liam Adadow, that reflected her own values and experiences of respect for the natural world.
“I passionately believe that we need to foster in our children a deep respect and awareness for our earth, and the only way we can do this is to model it ourselves,” Mulholland said.
“We literally need to dig our toes and fingers into the dirt, lie on the earth, smell the soil and connect with that to which we belong.”
The school schedule is from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, with an optional 30-minute yoga class for kids and their grown-ups at 8:30 a.m. all three days, and an optional local food lunch from 1 to 2 p.m. each Wednesday.
Classes on Mondays take place at South Whidbey State Park on Smugglers Cove Road in Freeland, and Tuesdays and Wednesdays are at South Whidbey Tilth, where Calyx has access to a small kitchen for cooking classes, snacks and the lunch option and a small room for music learning, and other indoor learning activities.
For more information, visit www.calyxcommunityartsschool.wordpress.com, email CalyxCommunityArtsSchool@gmail.com or call 331-1323.
