A Story Emerging…
Spring is coming. Plants, birds, animals are all emerging from the cold of the winter. It feels like we are emerging too. And with the emergence of spring comes new stories. Stories to enliven and inspire us.
“The Singing Tree” is the story that the kids and I are exploring at the moment, and it fits perfectly into this theme of spring, growth and fresh possibility.
The story takes place in Persia, and begins with a Shah who marries a sweet and kind woman from the village. This woman has two sisters, and they are not at all pleased that their sister was chosen as the Shah’s wife. They seek revenge by sneakily replacing her first-born baby with a puppy, her second-born with a cat, and her third-born with a lamb. The real babies they place in baskets and put into the river.
Luckily, the Shah’s gardener and his wife rescue all three babies and raise them as their own. They grow up well and happy as Fareed, Fouad and Feyrouz. Feyrouz, the sister, loves her adopted father very much and is determined to make the garden around their house the most beautiful garden anyone has ever seen.
A wise old woman informs her that her garden will never be complete without three things: a speaking bird, a singing tree and golden water. And here is where the real adventure begins…
While this story is quite complex, there are many elements that make it appealing and exciting for preschoolers, like the babies being swapped for animals, and the adventure Feyrouz must embark upon to find the speaking bird, singing tree and golden water. It is this adventure that is inspiring our own explorations.
We’ve been thinking already about what kinds of things we find in gardens and what makes a garden beautiful, and last week we ventured out for a real world experience and to get some first-hand data. We went on a bus ride downtown to the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Chinese Gardens to see what we could find in the way of inspiration. Much like in the story, however, we encountered an obstacle in our path. The Sun Yat Sen gardens were closed due to pond maintenance! Well, in the story, Feyrouz and her brothers must try three times before they are successful in finding the speaking bird, singing tree and golden water, so perhaps we will need to do the same…
As is so often the case with children, anything can be turned into an adventure, so we did get some inspiration after all, finding roosters, statues, trees, rocks, symbols, artwork, bicycles that were turned into gardens, and much more (though to Mattis’s dismay, we didn’t find any walruses…).
We will be taking inspiration from what we have found and using the story as a jumping off point to begin planting and creating our very own mini-garden. Over the course of this season’s Big Kids Club, I hope to find the speaking bird, singing tree and golden water for our garden as well. Or perhaps we will take the kids ideas and make our own version, in which case our garden will likely include walruses…
 |
 |
 |
 |
Stay tuned and join us on our adventures of gardening and magic!
May 8 – Planting our Garden
May 15 – Painting Stones on the Path
May 22 – Closed for the Long Weekend
May 29 – Field Trip! The Singing tree in Queen E. Park
June 5 – Creatures for the Garden
June 12 – Making Golden Water
June 19 – The Shah returns: A Garden Party
June 26 – Field Trip! Cottonwood Garden
