Living Library Day at Riley Park Community Garden

 We started out the printing process by creating a bee drawing to transfer to a rubber block.

Artist Jasna Guy taught the students how to carve the blocks and create prints on paper.

Then I worked with the students to create collaborative pieces by sharing stamps and passing around the emerging artwork.


Finally, students added the names of top plants for pollinators in the Lower Mainland, researched by Dr. Elle's lab at Simon Fraser University.

These collaborative works of art will be shown at events in the community in "clothesline exhibitions."

Earlier in the process, students did watercolour paintings of bees.

These rubber stamps are easier to carve than linoleum, but can be a bit fragile.

Guess which piece Ms. Kool made!!

Then we took the process to Rile Park for our Living Library Day. This was one of the activity stations students worked at while discussing topics close to their hearts.

 Art talked about the natural history of the site and soil science, Anya gave a tree talk, and Thomas led a yoga circle.

Tamara led the wood-chip moving crew, to form the paths that make the garden take shape.

Jess led the weeding party and had interesting conversations with students. Once they got started weeding, they didn't want to switch stations!

Plantain is one of the common garden weeds in Vancouver. If you get stung by a bee, wash up a leave, chew it and apply it to the sting.

One of the boys found and named this ragged moth.

Yoga was also popular!!!

 Students helped prep these elements which will be part of future garden signage.

Wendy led the students in further adventures in printmaking, getting them to take risks and try new techniques.

This is what the future of education looks like!

Now the herb garden is clearly defined. Hopefully the squirrels who have been uprooting and eating the herbs will get the message.

After the event, our youngest garden helpers checked out the new pollinator patch in the parking lot. I counted 6 species of bees foraging in the lacy phacelia, California poppy, California bluebells, and baby blue eyes.

It looks like a coyote has been snoozing in this cozy spot.

Blue orchard mason bee and mixed bumblebee.

A honeybee carrying the purple pollen from this plant. In German it is known as "bienen freunde" or the bee's friend.

 Another species of solitary bee.

This solitary bee is carrying dry pollen, so it is a light purple colour. Bumblebees and honeybees mix a bit of bee spit into their pollen loads, so it appears much darker.

The pollen on the anthers is a light periwinkle blue.

This bumblebee has been foraging on another plant with rich chocolate-coloured pollen--maybe red clover.

A big thanks to everyone who came out and collaborated for our Living Library Day! Special thanks to Tupper High School, the Riley Park Community Garden and ArtStarts who funded this project.

Floral Reproduction and Cuckoo Bees at Tupper

One of the advantages of having the science classroom so close to the art room at Tupper is we can take advantage of the tools in Ms. Krickan's class. We love this 3D model of the inside of a flower. Biologist Erin Udal introduces the concepts of plant reproduction: plant sex!!!!

It's important to understand the anatomy of the bee's face and tongue in order to understand how the flower fits the bee and the bee fits the flower.

Erin brings a collection of her locally sourced bees, flies, and wasps to study under the dissecting microscopes. Each student has a field book to record observations during this project.

This active classroom is also used for planting in the Tupper Greenway right outside the door.

How NOT to put a pinned insect under a microscope! You should hold it in your fingers or put it in a glob of silly putty, otherwise the yellow jacket will lose its delicate appendages.

This poster comes in handy to show the biodiversity of North American Bees. We also use their book Bees in Your Backyard: A Guide to North America's Bees by Wilson and Carril. Plus we use another handy dandy book called Victory Gardens for Bees. (-;

Learning about the gender of plants and bees helps create insights into that complex and murky area of human gender and sexuality.

Just as finches developed morphology to feed in an evolutionary niche, bees also have different shapes of heads and tongues to fit into different guilds of flowers.

 Artist and gardener Catherine Shapiro gave a demo on creating paint from natural pigments.

Students personalized their field journals with collage.

 

These are the rich colors made with natural pigments.

Catherine shows a highly coveted  research book: Natural Colorants for Dyeing and Lake Pigments: Practical Recipes and their Historical Sources by Jo Kirby.

Bees on the line! Watercolor and fineliner paintings in progress.

The next day we looked at flowers under the scopes.

Ms. Krickan explains the dissecting tools to grade 8 art students. These are all flowers from my garden: rhododendrons, forget-me-nots, bluebells, dandelions, and bleeding hearts.

Students draw outside in the greenway, and inside as they look at flowers under the scopes.

I took them out to show the nesting sites and practise netting and releasing bees.

After class I spotted to species of cuckoo bees at another nesting site  which we'll have to check out next class. This is a nomada species.

This is a sphecodes cuckoo bee.  Now that the sweat bees have started their nests, these parasitic "wannabees" sneak in and lay their eggs in a true bee's nest.

Here's the narwhal of the fly world: Bombilidae spp.

Watch for these honey-bee sized andrena mining bees in the apple blossoms.

The dogwoods are blooming, but I hardly ever see insects in the blossoms. Let me know if you do!

And here's my first seasonal sighting of an escaped Eastern Bumblebee--a farmed bee from the greenhouse industry that is implicated in the collapse of Western Bumblebee populations.

Looking forward to three days of lessons next week!