Peppermint trees came into focus when the Year 3 class had its first visit from Josh Whiteland this week as part of the Wardandi Mentoring Project.
Teacher, Ashley Williamson
said students learnt about traditional uses for the tree for bird calling, making medicine, digging sticks, ceremonies and even how to cook the ash into damper. “Josh is coming back on Thursday to teach us how to make our own diggings sticks and bark rope which we will use in our tour guiding.”
Ashley said the idea of the project was to share rich oral stories through indigenous language. In the afternoon, parent, Kyllie Deltondo ran a weaving workshop in which the class made birds nests from “peppi trees”.
AISWA’s Wendy Gorman also attend the session observing and helping. She plans to showcase the project in a world forum on Nature Pedagogy in New Zealand later in 2017.