Scan the yard at Crescent Town Elementary School this summer and you will see a colourful guide to the dozens of wild creatures that live next door.
PHOTOS: Andrew Hudson
Winding just behind the school is Taylor Creek and a wetlands habitat where Crescent Town students have planted new shrubs, released butterflies and taken several fall, winter and spring walks that show off the changing seasons.
To learn about the animals that live near Taylor Creek and to brighten the yard, five Grade 1 classes at the school finished the year on June 26 by hanging dozens of paintings along the fence that borders the park. All the materials for the paintings were donated by Danforth Lumber.
Muhammad, 6, says he enjoyed painting his animal – a fuzzy yellow wasp with six legs and four narrow wings. He found out that wasps live in paper nests and eat other insects to survive.
His mother Mardisa, one of the dozens of parents who came to the opening day of the paintings project, said the whole thing was a wonderful idea.
“In fact, I didn’t know anything about wasps before this morning,” she said, laughing.
Having moved to Toronto a month ago from Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, which has an overall population of 15 million, she said she is still getting used to living by a large, forested area.
Crescent Town is an excellent school, she added, noting that her son’s English is quickly improving and the Grade 4 graduation ceremony put on by her daughter’s teachers the day before was a lot of fun, too.
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