When tourists and potential newcomers go to the visitor center in Port Townsend, there’s plenty of material to help them learn about the area – pamphlets, visitor guides, maps.

This summer, for the first time, there were guides for kids, too. Guides for kids that were made by kids.

A collection of illustrated alphabet cards representing places in Port Townsend and Jefferson County were created by kindergarten classes at Grant Street Elementary School as part of the school district’s place-based maritime learning initiative. At the end of the school year, the cards were brought to the visitor center.

“It sparked conversations with visitors,” said center director Lorna Mann of the cards, which represent places like Rose Theatre, Chetzemoka Park and Elevated Ice Cream Co.

“The ice cream pictures from Elevated were persuasive,” she said laughing, and noted that they might have given visitors expectations that were a bit too high.

“When you [a kindergartner] love something, you love it times 20,” said former kindergarten teacher Maggie Kelley.

COMMUNITY

The project was completed this past school year at the Grant Street school and is to be developed further in the coming years, said Kelley. Kelley, who is now teaching fifth grade at Blue Heron School, was one of five kindergarten teachers who worked with their students on the project in the 2016-17 school year.

It was created to help the kindergarten-age children explore and understand their community in a place-based learning style while practicing skills such as spelling and writing.

Before they started creating the alphabet cards, Kelley invited her students to have conversations about the different places in their town, and share whether they’d visited those places and what they’d done there. Many talked about their parents, who work at businesses in Port Townsend like the hospital and the paper mill.

“It just kind of came alive,” Kelley said.

Geography also was an educational component. The students created a large map of Port Townsend and – encouraged by the teacher’s questions – placed buildings on that map.

“Can I put the police station right next to the water?” Kelley would ask her class.

“No, Ms. Maggie!” the students responded.

“Is your house closer to school or closer to Elevated Ice Cream?” Students would then figure out the location of their homes in the community.

XOXO

Through partnering with the Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce and the visitor center, the project became more community-oriented and engaging.

“We wanted to make the project more authentic for students, and for it to have some real weight and meaning,” Kelley said.

Kelley said that when Mann came by the school and gave a presentation and made a “plea” to the students to help make an alphabetized visitor guide for other children, her class responded with an enthusiastic “yes!”

The alphabet cards became part of the visitor center’s display and give newcomers an idea of what life in the town is like, from a kid’s perspective.

Kelley said that Fort Worden State Park, the vet/animal shelter, Elevated Ice Cream Co. and Waterfront Pizza are some of the more popular places her students chose to draw on their cards.

And when they became stumped by the letter “X,” Kelley suggested “XOXO” (hugs and kisses).

Those cards, she told her students, show their affection for their families and friends, and would portray the love that’s here in Port Townsend to people visiting from out of town.