A Little Fishy

After a three-week vacation, a new year, a new preschool room and three new students, mid-January, a new unit of study was in order. I thought my class might find an investigation of the animals of Lesotho a very engaging topic (think ponies, sheep, goats), plus there would be no problem finding field trip sites and opportunities for observation. But the Wednesday after the Christmas break, when I remembered, “crap! I didn’t plan anything for science today!” I hurriedly searched through what I had on hand, and found a book about starfish.

The children loved the book, particularly the photos of the starfish clinging to a rock and opening a clamshell. I made a hasty decision to skip the ponies for now, and stick with the fish. Being a land locked country, Lesotho wouldn’t offer many field trip opportunities or hands-on experiences related to the topic, but I figured these children love water almost as much as they love wearing their swimsuits, and any project in which I could incorporate those things would be a success. Unfortunately, it was later apparent that unseasonably chilly and very unpredictable weather made planning a swimming activity (of the real, not imagined, variety) impossible, but in spite of that drawback, our study of the ocean ended up working.

To start, I got out the chart paper and got a pretty good idea of our collective fish knowledge. We had the following conversation:

Me: What do you know about fish?
Justin: I like a purple sea star.
Lydia: Fish sleep in the water.
Justin: They swim in the water.
Thabo: A fish tastes like food.
Sushmita: A shark is going to eat fish . . . My grandmother gives me fish and rice.
Anna: Mom gives me my fish [to eat].
Esther: I eat a shark.

Me: Is there a sea creature in this shell?
Ibrahim: No in there.

Me: What color is a fish?
Sienna: Orange.
Janelle: Red.

Me: What does a fish eat?
Letsie: A fish eats water.
Justin: A fish eats a shell.
Sushmita: Small fish.

Despite the fact that my students’ apparent desire to eat fish is larger than their knowledge about fish, I decide we should just go with it. I got out some seashells which the children managed to crush like sand castles within seconds of touching them. I kept this in mind the following day when I brought in starfish borrowed from a colleague who had them imported from elderly Floridian parents, and introduced the “touch with one finger only” rule.

The next day, I began the nearly daily ritual of reading the Leo Lionni classic, Swimmy, one of my- and students’- favorite books of all time. Swimmy is a little black fish who explores the ocean after the rest of the fish in his school are eaten by a tuna. He is amazed by all of the creatures he meets, who are all described beautifully (“an eel whose tail was almost too far away to remember . . .”), until he finds a school of fish just like himself, hiding because they are afraid of being eaten. Swimmy, who wants the other little fish to see all of the wonders he has, teaches them to swim in a formation to appear as a larger fish to frighten their predators away. And fish actually do that! Who knew? (Not me.) This concept also appears in a 1960s bumper sticker: On the left, a picture of a school of little fish swimming away from a big fish, and on the right, the school of little fish chasing the big fish away. In the middle is emblazoned, “ORGANIZE!” Well, it just so happens, someone made me a skirt with that design embroidered on it, and I wore it the day I read Swimmy. I felt a bit like Miss Frizzle, the teacher in the Magic School Bus series, who always wears dresses patterned with a motif related to the science topic of the day. But if I ever start looking into the purchase of themed sweaters, the sort with a Christmas tree that really lights up, please do stop me.

Continuing to engage my students’ inclinations toward the imaginary, I populated our water play with plastic sea animals. So what if the shark has a dopey, sedated smile! So what if ducks swim with walruses! So what if the crab is twice as large as the humpback whale! We rigged up a boat out of a cardboard box and made the sail out of an old sheet. I herded the children in the boat and commanded them to row like a coxswain Nazi before realizing that you don’t row a sailboat. It was time to ground this study back into reality.

Well, I was again forced to face the fact that a school in a land-locked country does not lend itself to a study of the ocean very easily, and the fact that the local markets are devoid of fresh (or dried) fish led me to believe that the rivers and lakes are not all that populated with water life. The nearest aquarium was a five hours drive away at least, and scouting out dentist’s offices and Chinese restaurants for what I thought were obligatory fish tanks did not yield any more promising results. And finally I realized that although the aquariums might be too far away but pet shops could be reached in two hours. I sent my neighbor who makes weekly pilgrimages to Bloemfontein to buy us some scaly little friends.

Two days later, the goldfish arrive in all their glory, in a water and air filled plastic bag, held in the passenger side seat safely with a seat belt. The children were immediately enamored and christened the newest additions to our classroom, So and Razyfish. While voting for names, other suggestions included Swimmy, Shark and other names that actually made sense, but when it came time to vote, democracy spoke and until the day comes when they are flushed down the toilet, I am forced to say to parents, “So and Razyfish. . . . No, SO and RAZYFISH. . . . So as in “So What” Razyfish as in, well, ya know, Razyfish . . . No, not Crazy Fish, RAZYFISH . . . I don’t KNOW why.” And so So and Razyfish began their preschool existence, swimming, eating and pooping in their bowl (which used to be my mixing bowl) on the science table, to be observed and drawn by children whose primary concern was probably what they tasted like.

After many more books about the ocean and many hours of staring into the fishbowl, my friends Zoey and Shingi were passing through Maseru, and as certified SCUBA divers, got manipulated into taking my preschoolers on an imaginary diving expedition. They explained all the gear we would need and while the children suited up in their invisible outfits, I dressed Thabo in an absurd makeshift diving suit (Power Ranger costume, pink plastic goggles, rubber gloves on his feet as flippers and my water bottle strapped to his back with a silk scarf as an oxygen tank). We swam around the school (after sailing and rowing our cardboard boat to the middle of the ocean) spotting (pretend) ocean life and manhandling (real) seashells. When we surfaced we turned into fishermen and Hassan caught a box of frozen hake fillets. Finally! We get to eat our topic of study. The fishcakes didn’t . . . “cake” as planned, but it was evidently delicious as a mush, or more accurately papa and fish (papa being the local maize staple, ranging from a porridge like to hard lump of dough consistency).

After the highly stimulating SCUBA dive and fish cooking, we reconvened in an ocean-knowledge-sharing session. And as I returned the shockingly intact starfish to their owner, and the crushed shells to the science cabinet and relocated So and Razyfish from the science table to my desk, the children authored the following book:

Preschool loves the ocean.
The ocean is made of water and salt and fish.

Little fish hide from big fish who eat them. Little fish swim together like a big tuna to scare the big fish so big fish can’t eat them.

We can have fish and our classroom too. So and Razyfish. They swim and eat.

Eel stays in the ocean and looks like a snake.

Jellyfish! They have a mouth!

Sea Star live in the ocean. A sea star can have five arms to open food. A sea star eats with a mouth. A sea star is slow. A sea star is bumpy.

Lobster! He pinch! Lobster is like a crab. Crab has 10 legs. Shells on the beach go in the sand so a big bird can’t eat them.

Our favorite whale is beluga. It’s white and swimming. See the water squirting out of his head.

Scuba Divers! A people! They have science in the ocean. Flippers are for swimming in the water. Goggles are to keep water out of the eyes. Children can have goggles at home. Maybe we can be a SCUBA diver too.

Preschool loves the ocean. (The End).

And they do!