by Amy Pack, Andrea Pierotti, and Kerry Mills

The doll, while unknown and a curiosity, was immediately loved and became our Garden Friend. We held a garden meeting and introduced her to everyone in the class. At once the doll was cradled like a baby, patted like a pet, and talked to like a friend. In no time, the children began to tell a story wondering how the doll got there, where it came from, and what it was doing in the garden.

The Garden Friend spent a week in the classroom so ideas could continue to percolate, and the character and story for our Garden Friend began to emerge. We learned that the stuffed friend was from Kerry Mills’s friends at Milk River Arts (an art community for neurodiverse artists). Milk River made these dolls as a fundraiser for their organization and as a way to acknowledge how we haven’t been able to do as much with our friends during COVID as we have in the past. When these stuffed friends come together, it will be a friends’ party!

The children started to draw their ideas for the character and worked to create a story.

As they shared their stories with each other, we started to notice a few common threads.

Many stories contained…

As Kerry, Amy, and Andrea reflected on these common threads, we realized they were profound and a great summary of so much of our year in Kindergarten together as a learning community.

We combined the students’ stories into one and shared the combined story with the class to see what they thought. They loved it, especially the character’s extra-long name: Mrs. Corn Marie Rosie Lucy Lilly Ella Belle Rosafina August. We honored all of their ideas for names and their stories of the Garden Friend. 

Here begins the story of our Garden Friend, written by the Kindergarten class:

She loved the garden so much, she decided to stay. That is why we found her hanging out in the garden watching the birds. She was lonely but not anymore since we found her. When we found the doll in the tree we rocked her like a baby.

Our Garden Friend really likes to garden. Her grandma taught her how to grow things. She has garden magic and stayed in our garden because we needed help. Our garden has so many weeds. She uses her magical powers with the help of a unicorn sidekick to help us have the power to pull all the weeds and for the flowers to grow for the birds and bees. She helps us water, plant new things, and keeps watch while we are not there. She really likes us and wants to stay, but after us, she will move on to help another garden.

Tired of her computer work and social media, our Garden Friend came to the garden for some peace and rest — to take a break. Once when she was resting in the garden, she had a dream. In the dream, she went to work at the Dollar Shop. She likes to give people money even though they buy things. In the dream, she was at home sleeping and then walked to the garden. She woke up in the dream. She was lost and scared, so she was looking for friends. She found the kindergarteners. She sat up on Kerry’s lap and wanted to play with them. When she woke up for real, she realized she was in the garden from her dream.

Our Garden Friend loves to sit under the fig tree and rest. She feels peaceful in the garden. Our Garden Friend is a garden guard who protects the garden with her magic powers and abilities.

The Kindergarten wanted to add more details to their Garden Friend such as clothes, a face, and hair. Kerry talked with them about it… which of the different characters would we choose? That was a tough question, because each of the characters created was loved by each child. So, it was decided as a group they would each make a mask of their character for the Garden Friend, like a paper doll, so the character could be changed. We had a character parade where each mask was worn by our Garden Friend.

The Garden Friend was introduced to the Kindergarteners with the hope we could come up with a character, or a bit of a story, but there were no expectations. We waited for the relationship with the doll to develop organically, and the class became engaged and enthralled with the doll. They really came to love her and developed a bond with her and her story. The project work and discussions that emerged around the Garden Friend illustrated the threads of the Kindergarten year: hard work and perseverance, our sense of community, cooperation, stories we tell, supporting and caring for one another, pushing our comfort zones, as well as developing relationships and being friends.

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