Getting with the Programmes

The school programmes at the Nature Park started today, and both Lori and I felt they went well. This in spite of the afternoon's Kindergarten class whose answer to the question,
'What mammal might behind the curtain?' was,
'Dinosaur!'
Getting them to concentrate was like trying to get tadpoles to all swim in the same direction. They had a substitute teacher, often a problem for any class, except this one was particularly good.
My station is near the snake tank and so I am competing with them. Lori's is by the beehive, so she of course, competes with them.
The upside was that they greatly enjoyed being ninja raccoons. Oh dear lord, what they didn't know about ninjas wouldn't be worth knowing. And when they were having to creep around wearing raccoon masks, they were able to be quiet, not listen, but be quiet.
We play Chinese Whispers, only I'm not allowed to call it that because someone will invariably complain if you mention a nationality. Presumably this is because they just don't get the whole concept of what racism is, ergo of course, the previous discussion about whether my raccoons could be ninjas.
Chinese Whispers is now Ninja Whispers.

This morning's class were a different animal altogether, quiet, interested, listened well, followed instructions.
It's interesting teaching the programmes to children from so many different schools in the area, from Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Delta and Surrey, you do get an idea about which schools you'd send a kid to.

One question which seems problematic for all of them is whether the stuffed animals are real. I tell them yes, but they are not alive. They can't differentiate between alive and real.

I just had to mention that I received an e from my friend Di, who said that she had just finished reading my post about scat when on TV came Bill Oddie, filmed on Vancouver Island and talking about, yes, scat. I wonder if he was at Goldstream Park.

One thing that I haven't yet encountered but which Lori has warned me about is that there is one school in the area that doesn't like us talking about evolution. I'm not sure how I would be able to handle this because I simply don't feel very open-minded towards such people.

By coincidence, Sleepy sent me an article about a Kenyan cleric who is not happy about the whole topic, he wants a prehistoric human skeleton held in the national museum to be locked away in a backroom and labelled with the statement that Evolution is not a fact. Apparently it's killing the faith. He clearly doesn't understand what the word 'Faith' means.

Oh well, it seems some mammals are dinosaurs after all.