It's all still worth it.

The Happiest Little Ulu

Its Friday night and the week just keeps rolling along.  Tomorrow we have an NLAS Board meeting and on Sunday I have housework.  I'm not terribly good at multi-tasking, so this week has kept me hopping.  Most of Wednesday was dedicated to preparation for all the different meetings that I had lined up for Thursday.  On Thursday morning I worked with the Open Minds students at The Rooms, where we talked about Inuit tools and experimental archaeology and then made ground stone artifact reproductions.

Always a favourite teacher and class to work with in the Open Minds program at The Rooms

Getting closer...

Since I was at The Rooms already, I popped down to the archaeology lab and visited the Ikaahuk artifacts.  There's a certain amount of deep breathing necessary to transition from working with two dozen 10 year olds to planning millimetre by millimetre cuts to antler and ivory reproductions.  In the afternoon I played catch-up on e-mail then in the evening we had our last evening of the MUNArch flintknapping workshop, where we worked with glues and sinew to haft stone tools.

Knapping and hafting tools in the Great Hall with MUNArch

 Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Open Minds

Student ulus

I'm putting the blog on auto-pilot for the next couple of weeks with pre-scheduled posts.  I've been wrapping up a few small Elfshot jobs this week, including one last Open Minds workshop at The Rooms.  I'll be back in later in March to work with another class of students making ground stone ulus.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Wrapping up at The Rooms

Parents volunteers are awesome

On Tuesday morning, I had my last Open Minds classroom visit of the year at The Rooms and I'm looking forward to next year.  The ground stone or ulu making sessions have been really popular with the kids.  I like doing the flintknapping demonstrations, but there are some real memorable learning opportunities  when the kids get to work with their hands and create something that they can keep.  Its much safer and easier to do that with ground slate instead of knapping stone or glass. We sure get dusty though!

Discussing what they learned.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Flintknapping Demonstration Notes

Dorset knife on the tarp

I did the first Open Minds flintknapping demonstration of the season yesterday at The Rooms.  It was for grade five students who are spending the school week in a classroom in The Rooms, getting a behind the scenes look at the Provincial Art Gallery, Archives, and Museum.  For today, I'm going to pretend that no one reads this diary and make a few notes for myself for future demonstrations.

The toughest question that I got was; "Why do you knap on your lap instead of a table?"

I always work on my lap.

I don't think I've ever had that question before and the short answer is "Because that's how I was taught."  There are knappers who do amazing work using benches or tables as support.  It seems especially well suited for pressure and punch knapping.  I do want to practice more with punches, so maybe I should try working on benches from time to time.  I use small wooden anvils in the workshop that I do punch work on, so maybe I should bring one along to the next demo to show that there are different ways to work stone tools.  Just because I'm comfortable working one way doesn't mean that's the way everyone did it in the past.

I usually use obsidian in classroom demonstrations.  Its not local, but its more predictable than the Newfoundland chert that I use when making artifact reproductions.

The best new addition to the demo is the "Caribou hunt" detachable foreshaft demonstration.

Interchangeable foreshafts

I stumbled on this last spring and need to remember to make time for it in each demo because it really gets the kids on board.  I have one Maritime Archaic spear shaft and five matching foreshafts with stone points.  To demonstrate one reason why people would make composite tools with detachable foreshafts, I tell the kids that they are a caribou herd and I'm a hunter.  With one spear and a bag of five foreshafts I can take down many caribou at one time.  With the first foreshaft hafted in the spear, I pick a kid/caribou to "stab" - they hold on to the foreshaft and I pull away the main shaft, refit it with another foreshaft and pick another kid/caribou.  The most important thing is to slaughter the kids equally, I stabbed a row of boys the first time, and the girls complained it wasn't fair until I stabbed them as well.  Once the kids understand that people made complex, composite tools with interchangeable parts many new avenues of discussion open up.

Lots of reproductions on the tarp help generate discussion during the demonstration.  Passing them around keeps kids engaged.

The wobbliest point is talking about the rocks before the demo starts.  

Reproductions and raw materials

I need to talk about the rocks a bit to set things up, but kids don't really get drawn in until the first flake gets knocked off with the hammerstone.  Maybe I need to do that right away, right after "Hello, my name is..." crack off a big flake and then talk about rocks and what the demo is going to be about.  That would probably get their attention earlier and hold it longer.

The best advice I ever received on giving flintknapping demos was not to expect to do your best work.  Save that for your workshop and bring those examples along, but in a demonstration, its ok to lower your expectations.  You don't have the time to set-up every platform and plan every flake like you do at home, so don't expect the same results.   

Photo Credits:
1,2,4-7: Tim Rast
3: Michael Burzynski

Something new every day

Open Minds tarp after the demo

I'm home now from the last Open Minds demonstration of the school year.  This was a grade 4 class who are spending the school week at The Rooms.  After the flintknapping demonstration the kids took some of the reproductions back to their tables to sketch and do "Condition Reports" on.  One of the students brought me back a soapstone plummet with a magnet stuck to it.  I had no idea that soapstone could be magnetic.  I knew that some of the soapstone from the Baie Verte Peninsula in Newfoundland contained iron and would weather with a rusty appearance, but I didn't remember learning that it was magnetic.  Pretty cool.

Soapstone plummet with magnets

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Open Minds demo days are the best demo days

Two talented artists

What a great way to head into the weekend!  I just got home from doing a flintknapping demo for a grade 5 class participating in the Open Minds program at The Rooms.   These demonstration days are always a lot of fun, but this class was particularly enthusiastic and talented. They asked lots of questions about the work and tools and some even asked for photos and autographs at the end.  Stephanie Slaney, the Open Minds Co-ordinator at The Rooms, has the following quote in her e-mail signature that I think sums up the philosophy of the program:

"The way children best learn the complex skills and dispositions of adulthood is through keeping real company with the type of experts they hope to become (and....through keeping company with the real things of the world)."

Deborah Meier, In Schools We Trust

Demonstration props

The kids had the option to record the presentation how ever they wanted.  Some took notes, most drew the artifact reproductions, one girl took a video of the whole hour and a half demonstration on her camera, and a few drew me flintknapping.  Some of the students gave me photocopies of their drawings from their journals, so I thought I'd share them.    I felt like a star and got some great new Facebook profile images - check them out!

Photo Credits: Tim Rast / Drawings by an awesome 5th grade class!

A Day at The Rooms

Hands-on learning

I spent yesterday at The Rooms.  In the morning I did a flintknapping demonstration and worked with the grade 8 and 10 students attending the Open Minds program this week.  After the demo, the students selected one or more artifacts and described them at their desk.  They recorded how it was made, what materials it was made from, how it would have been used, and what culture and time period it belonged to.

Teacher's notes from the demo - wow!

They really seemed into the experience and they asked a steady stream of questions.  It was a great dialog and all the questions helped make the time fly.  With all the other interesting discussion that the class was generating, it was a challenge to get back to the knapping and finish the demonstration piece.

And once again, as soon as my part of the program was over, their school closed for an impending storm.  The students got to go home again right after their flintknapping and archaeology morning.  That's two for two.  The same thing happened two weeks ago when I was in for the Open Minds program.

Maritime Archaic Projectile Point from Bird Cove

At noon, I took my flintknapping boxes out to the car and came back in with my camera, books, and laptop to work down in the archaeology lab for the afternoon. I was going through the Maritime Archaic collections from Bird Cove again.  We're still plugging away on that paper and I had a few more questions about some of the artifacts.  It also gave me a chance to see some of the other Martime Archaic collections from other sites around the Province.  Sometime before the end of this fiscal year, I'll be doing a a set of Maritime Archaic reproductions for education kits at Port au Choix.  A few of the pieces are familiar, but others will be new for me, so I snapped a few reference photos that will help in their construction.  More on that later.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

A hectic week that's not quite over

Post Demo Tarp

The last half of this week has been a hodge podge of meetings and writing.  Yesterday, I had a fun morning at The Rooms doing a flintknapping demo for the grade 8 class who are doing the Open Minds program this week.  Every week throughout the school year, a different classroom full of kids in the St. John's area get to go to school in The Rooms and learn all about the Museum, Art Gallery, and Archive.  They delve behind the scenes and meet and work with different staff and guest presenters for 5 days.

Winter! I love it!

The demo went well and the kids were great, although I'm sure the flintknapping was eclipsed by the snowstorm that gave them the rest of the day off after lunch.  I'm happy to see winter finally arrive as well - its been way to warm and wet here lately.  It'll be nice to have some snow on the ground for a while.

Ulu reproductions and artifact

With the kids gone and a storm raging outside, I took my time packing up.  I had a few reproductions with me based on artifacts on permanent exhibit in the Connections Gallery in the museum, so I popped in and took a few pictures of some of the reproductions next to the original artifacts that inspired them.

Reproductions used at The Rooms

On the work front, I've been doing a bit of writing.  I wrote a note on Andrew Qappik's November trip to Newfoundland for the Craft Council Newsletter and I'm working on a summary of the hooded seal skin experiments from last spring for the Provincial Archaeology Newsletter.  Three of the four authors for the Bird Cove Maritime Archaic Indian paper met this morning and we hashed out what needs to go into the next edit of the paper.  Hopefully we can get that wrapped up and out to review in the next few weeks.

Verdigris encrusted copper needle

I haven't done much in the workshop over the past few days, although the needle has been patinating away in its evaporating dish of red wine vinegar and Miracle Gro.  It has a good colour.  I'll give it another 24 hours or so to make sure its done reacting and then I'll scrape the crystals off and scorch it with the blowtorch.  Everything looks more antiqued after a healthy blast from the blowtorch.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast