A collection of toy cars painted by the Kindergarten and Grade 4 students at Fort Assiniboine School will be on display at the local museum until June or thereabouts.
On April 5, the Kindergarten and Grade 4 students worked together to paint the cars, which were supplied by a local resident named Ed Graham.
Colleen Kiselyk, who teaches Kindergarten at Fort Assiniboine School, said Graham makes the cars himself and donates them every year to the students, who paint them and take them home.
Kiselyk indicated the idea is to teach students about the kind of toys children played with before the advent of modern technology and online shopping. The cars are just very simple in design and made of wood.
“You would not believe how much the kids love these cars. It is like a prized possession,” Kiselyk said, adding that she also has some older students ask if they could paint their own cars.
Incidentally, Kiselyk said Graham also leads the students on a tour of the Fort Assiniboine Museum, decorates cookies with them and does a fur trapping presentation, as the museum has some “beautifully stuffed” fur-bearing animals on display.
“Ed is just like a rock star,” she said.
This year, Graham donated the cars to the students as per usual, but this time he invited the students to display the cars at the museum until the end of the year just to show what local students are working on.
“They’ll be on display at our museum probably for the next month and a half,” said Kiselyk, adding that the students will take the cars home once the display is done.
She said they brought the Grade 4 students in on the project because Graham made a few extra cars this year and also because they had to use acrylic paint, which Kindergarten students shouldn’t use unsupervised.
“(The Grade 4 students) were just as excited, because they were decorating their cars as well,” said Kiselyk, adding that it was “a really great collaboration and a really neat community spirit activity.”
