In this feature we put the spotlight on Seymour and Deep Cove-area students who are doing amazing things at school or in their spare time. This month a local mom, Lara Sarabit, takes us on a trip to “Penderville” and tells us about the elaborate project her son, Quin Caplan, and his classmates created.
“What does it take to build a community?”
That’s the question teachers at the North Shore Child Care Centre inside Sherwood Park Elementary posed to their group of 30 children, ranging in age from five to 11 years old.
With guidance from teachers Jennifer Iving, Nicola Martin, Jacob Wagner and Lorena Galvez, the children imagined, planned, and built “Penderville” – a miniature city with a mountain, a running river, roadways and a bridge, commercial and residential neighbourhoods complete with electricity, and parks and recreational facilities.
The teachers at NSCCC created this collaborative inquiry-based project to teach the children about how communities function. In the process, the children learned so much more.
To start, the children met with a local architect for inspiration on model design. From there, they chose project managers, created working groups, and set team expectations.
The children learned about leadership, working collaboratively, problem solving, and being accountable to their team.
They used tools (hammers, drills, and plumbing equipment) and navigated online resources to learn construction techniques. The children were introduced to technical drawing, making interior and exterior building plans.
NSCC prides itself on encouraging resourcefulness, and many hours were spent on the North shore gathering building materials from the beach and forests, or repurposing old projects and donated materials.
The children gained real-world exposure to the types of employment and services it takes to run a community – each taking on different Penderville jobs such as a civil engineer and a landscape architect. They learned about finances, earning Penderville money based on their participation that they used to purchase their plot of land and to build their home.
The children worked on the project on average two hours a day over the course of a year.
They presented Penderville to their parents in early June with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Watching the children’s eyes light up as they explained the process, and pointed out their contributions, showed their sense of pride in having developed this a project from beginning to end. It is an example of creative, innovative teaching, and it is an experience the children will surely remember.
Brothers Yannick (age seven) and Ziggy Suchy (age nine) were part of the Penderville project. They liked the construction and the design elements of the project. Yannick says, “I really liked designing my house, and getting to pick its location on Gold Street.”
His brother Ziggy says, “Building the bridge was tricky. We had to modify the design with tape to keep it from falling down.” They both enjoyed building the mountain out of cups, wire, and paper mache, and when it was done, painting snow and placing two chairlifts on it.
The NSCCC has been part of the Deep Cove community for nine years, and the North Vancouver community for 15 years. They run before and after school care programs for children at Sherwood Park Elementary, as well as pre-school programs. They can frequently be seen hiking, biking, and exploring the Deep Cove community. ■
