It’s probably safe to say that the concept of legacy might be a bit abstract for most elementary students, especially with the twin realities of lunch and recess so readily available.
But a group of students at Garden Creek School recently undertook a project to address that weighty idea in the most delightful of ways.
During March and April, 19 Grade 4 and 5 students worked with staff and faculty to paint a school-themed mural in a stairwell at the school. The mural of a bare tree in a creek with a frog—the Garden Creek mascot—will eventually be adorned with paper leaves with the names of Grade 5 students who will be leaving (get it?) the school and moving onto middle school.
“I feel like it’ll be really cool because maybe someday when we’re older, we’ll have children that come here and it might still be here, and they’ll see it,” said Grade 5 student Lucy Spink, one two students whose initial concepts formed the template for the artwork.
“I feel like it’ll be really cool because maybe someday when we’re older, we’ll have children that come here and it might still be here, and they’ll see it”
Lucy Spink, Grade 5, Garden Street School
The idea for the mural came out of meetings of the teachers’ Spruce-Up Committee before the start of the current school year.
“We put it out to the kids in Grades 3, 4, and 5 to come up with a design for the mural,” said Garden Creek School Teacher Jacqueline Saunders. “There were a few elements we wanted in the design. We wanted a tree. We wanted the word ‘Creekers’, and our mascot, the frog.”
The committee looked at all of the designs submitted by the students and chose two that they would combine to create the mural. Spink and classmate Sydney Pearce were the two Grade 5 students whose designs were chosen.
“They liked the bottom half of her painting with the cattails and lily pads,” Spink said. “Then the tree and the frog and the beehive were my idea. I think both of us have it right.”
Said Pearce, “We had an artist who drew [the outline] with a black marker and then we coloured most of it.”
That artist was retired teacher Peter Ayer who came back to help with the project. Teacher Cathy Elvin, who is currently on leave, also came in after Peter left to help paint the rainbow.
The mural, though mostly completed, is still a work in progress, said Saunders: “We’re going to write ‘Once a Creeker, always a Creeker’. That’s a school motto that runs pretty strong and all the kids would know those words.”
“It looks awesome, and the kids have been really excited about it,” she said. “It feels like a happier way to end our day to walk down and see that rather than those blank white walls.”
