The week of waiting

This week we had a group of very chatty 6th graders. Especially when they were all together. Other than that they were pretty cool. My field group was really into walking around and looking for frogs. Every week I have the kids decide on a team name, this week my field group was the purple pencil shavings. The kids also decides this week we needed a mascot. They went with the wood frog, because we found 2 on our first field group.

Our weather this week was not very nice. It rained everyday. When it wasn't raining it was hot and muggy. There were a lot of mosquitos out.

This coming week we have another group of sixth graders coming. They'll be here for four days. I'm going to be teaching shelter building, jellybellyology, shark dissection, and WWF. WWF is a class about animal adaptations. You have kids pick an animal, then they must buy adaptations for them. After that student need to argue/defend their animal to see why it's better at surviving. In the end you pick an animal to be the ultimate survivor.

Also, sorry about the lack of pictures. My photo uploader is not working correctly. All of the pictures can be found on my Facebook page.

Weekend with my parents

This week we had 180 7th graders. It was a lot of kids. For the most part try were not to bad. They had their 7th grade moments though. My field group and I spent a lot of time looking for new trails to hike. They liked feeling like they were lost. We did a lot of hiking and talked about survival skills in the woods. So I taught them how to track and stalk prey, build fire, camouflage, and shelter building. They had a good time for the most part. They definitely went home tired at the end of the week.

This weekend my mom and came to visit. We had fun exploring Salem, Massachusetts. It was different then we were all thinking it would be. All of the historical sites are spread apart and tucked away in the city. We had to follow a red line around to find everything. (I think we thought it be like greenfield village.) The coolest thing we saw was the cemetery and witch trial victims memorial.  That night we went to a traditional New England clam shack for dinner. Afterwards we hung out watching an Indiana Jones marathon. This morning they got a tour of Natures Classroom before heading out. It was nice to see them.

This coming week we have about 90 6th graders coming. I was told that they are very intelligent but struggle with social skills. It should be an interesting week. I am praying for good weather this week, it's suppose to rain!

A long week

This past week we had 95 6th graders come and stay for the week. We had the same school, different group of students, come here a few weeks ago. As a whole the children really struggled with listening. There were a lot of daydreamers. Thankfully I had a pretty good field group. They all wanted to be here and they loved just hiking around. We discovered a lot of new trails this week. I had a student named Mason who loved hunting. He helped teach our field group all about tracking deer. We also found several species of frogs this week. Every Wednesday we have an all day hike. It goes from 9:30-2, and we make pack out lunches. I take the kids to see our tornado damage from 2011 usually. When we sat down to eat lunch, one of my students need to use the facilatrees. I taught her how and sent her on her way. I started to get worried after awhile because had been gone for a very long time. When she came back she was laughing... She had gotten pee all over her jeans! Thankfully she was a good sport about it and wasn't embarrassed at all.

This weekend I had to work at camp. I was with Retha doing boating for the day. Our morning was pretty good. The weather was nice and all the girls were kayaking and having fun. Well sadly our afternoon was not as fun. It started to get windy and rainy. we had to rescue some peddle boaters who were blown to the opposite shore. We played team building games afterwards. However both Retha and I we soaked. We had dripping wet pants and puddles in our boots. After we finished up with the girls we went to Bass Pro Shops. We had many of the staff staring at us because we were still dripping with water. Thankfully they had pants on sale :D

This coming week we have 170 7th graders coming. I am teaching tracking/stalking, megastructures, jellybellyology, shark dissection, and cultural fair. Then this weekend I am going to be taking the fam to Salem, Massachusetts!

Here are some pics from the week:

This is an american toad

This is a 400 year old tree!!

When we were at camp we got to see an owl show. Here is a saw whet owl.

My soaking wet pants after rescuing boats.

The Nutella Narwhales

This past week was great! The children were awesome. They were 5-8th graders from a gifted and talented program. Most of them were very smart and were very interested in how to survive outside. My field group was made up of 5th, 6th, and 7th graders. Every week on the first day I have my field group pick out a name. This week they voted on the nutella narwhal's. Three of my girls really like the name so they wrote the following chant for us: "We are the nutella narwhal's, we make all the important calls, we are a mix of a hazelnut spread and a whale with a horn on the top of its head". We said at the end of every field group, and they even incorporated it into our skit for Thursday Night Live. Also, this week I had a child name Taevis in my group. He was the weird but funny awkward child of the group. On the first day his best friend of the group got very homesick and had to leave. He was very sad at first because he was also the person who Taevis would play spit (the card game) with on their off time. So we agreed that everyday after lunch I would play spit with him. He was great, he even designed our field group a logo, so we could make t-shirts.

This coming week we have a group of 90 6th graders coming. I am going to be teaching salamander gander, ultra mega structures, jellybellyology, Shark Dissection, and soccer ball digestion.

Here are some pictures from the week: