Into the woods (Day 4)

Today we took a trip to Aullwood Audubon. We were given a tour around the trails. We were also given binoculars to look at any birds or animals we saw. We also investigated a pond to look for creatures. Eventually the tour ended with us going to the farm where we et our bus and ate lunch. When we got back to school we were given a lesson on writing a meditation script. For my mediation script I chose to take the reader/listener to a certain place. Here is what I wrote for my meditation scrpit.


Imagine looking all around you to see the yellowish color of the sand everywhere. With all the hills around you and the warm sand under your feet. Feel the warm sun shine brightly on you. Feel the wind blow against you and blow the sand, hitting you lightly and gently. Now imagine hearing splashes and suddenly feeling everything around you get cooler, slowly going away from the heat. Imagine swimming deeper and deeper into the water that you just entered without having to worry about going up for a breath. As you go deeper and deeper, not worrying about anything just going towards a light. As you continue to go under you break through a barrier and emerge on top of new waters in a completely different place. Now look back an see that the water is gone and you're back with all the sand slowly warming up.


   

Cox Arboretum- Day 3

Today, we started off by finishing up yesterdays things. I first chose to finish the Hershey Kiss activity. For this activity, we observed a Hershey Kiss and wrote detailed descriptions about its taste, feel, smell, the way it looks, and the sound. We also were given time to finish yesterdays blog. After we finished  we took a bus to Cox Arboretum. When we got there, we got to walk around and observe the Arboretum. We were also given a scavenger hunt to complete while we observed, the scavenger hunt required us to find 5 different types of trees and one creature. Once we found these we took pictures of them. The creature that I saw was a snake and the 5 types of trees that I saw were, an oak tree, a red maple, paper birch, English beech, and a pine. Once we finished the scavenger hunt we were able to go explore for the rest of the time. We ended the field trip by doing yoga for an hour and then we got on the bus and headed back to school.

My time at delco park

Today, we went to Delco Park. We walked to there from school. When we were there, we did an activity called the small world. For this activity, we found a spot anywhere in nature (not man made) and marked a square foot around it. Once we did that, we first stood up and observed our spot and recorded what we saw. For this part I wrote,

"I can see lots of different green, and very little brown of the dead grass. There isn't any movement among the grass and other plants."

Here, since I was standing up and I couldn't see much to find a lot of detail in my spot. Once we finished writing while standing, we kneeled down to get a closer look. While I kneeled down I wrote,

"I can see the wind slightly blowing the grass. I can see more shades of green and different types of grass and weeds around. There are some flower tucked underneath the layers of grass and I can see more dead grass folding down to the earth getting covered up by new grass."

Here, I could pay attention to more detail and I could write more and write in more detail. The next step for this activity was to lay down on our bellies and observe the spot very closely, here I wrote,

"I can see more shades of green, each belonging to a different type of plant, grass, weed. I can see through all the layers of the grass that are woven together and I can see the brown dirt underneath where all the green grows from. I can see even more dead grass tucked away underneath all of the new and green grass. I can see the patterns in some of the plants that are most likely seeds waiting to reach the dirt."

Into the woods (Day 1)

Today was the first day of the into the woods STEMmersion. We started off the day by doing a reading. A few members in the class took turns reading. It was sort of an introduction to this course. Since this was the first day there were many people who we didn't know so we did an activity to help us get to know everyone. First, we traced our hands down on a piece of paper. We then wrote 1 thing about us on each finger and went around the class telling people about ourselves. When we were done we signed each others papers and we were completely finished when we had everyone's signature. After we were done with that activity, we did a new one. This one was to help us get used to crossing murky waters since we are going to go canoeing and kayaking soon. We were split up into two teams and each team was given 4 blocks of wood. We then used this wood to get our whole team to cross a certain length before the other team. This activity required lots of teamwork.