Day 3

Arboretum:  noun.  A botanical garden devoted to trees.  That’s where I went today.  Thankfully, we didn’t have to walk to the Cox Arboretum.

Our task today was to photograph five different types of trees and at least one animal in the park.  With that information, we were to identify the tress that we’d observed.  We observed the leaves, overall shape, and bark of each tree.  Borrowing from yesterday’s lesson and blog, I spent some time looking closely at the leaves.  I noticed there were vein-like structures on the backs of the leaves that reminded me of the veins in my body.

We identified the types of tress we’d photographed by the shapes of the their leaves.  Comparing the leaves to the pictures on a website, we figured out the types of trees we’d seen.  You’ll notice some of the trees are evergreens.  Are the needles on these trees really leaves?  Yes, they are.  The needles on the pine tree perform the same functions as the large leaves on the big oak trees. 

This is a Bald Cypress tree

This is a Cottonwood tree

This is a Blue Spruce and below is it's needles

This is a long needle pine tree

This is a maple tree

After we completed this task, we had some free time to explore the arboretum.  We spent some time in a tree house.  That was fun, but to be honest it wasn’t actually high in a tree.  The treehouse was made of wood, but just wasn’t built in an actual tree.  We used the treehouse as the place for us to eat our bag lunch.  While in the treehouse, we saw a deer walking through the brush.  Seemed odd the deer was walking through the thick brush when there was a game trail 20 feet away.  Why do you suppose she didn’t use the trail?  Once we were out of the treehouse, we walked around the park for about 15 minutes before it was time to go back to the school.

Day 2

Today was a interesting day as I got to go on a field trip to Delco Park.  I won’t lie, I did have some problems with the trip such as walking there by foot which took an hour there and another hour back.  Although, it wasn’t that terrible, it was an extremely boring walk.  Once we arrived at the Park, we had a guest speaker who lifted my mood with his activities that were rather fun and interesting.  One of those activities I found to be fun was writing a *haiku.  However, they weren’t normal haiku’s. No, we based each sentence off three random words we found on a random object or magazine page. Writing the haiku’s was fun and intriguing as it required us to be very creative.  My three random words were; public, park, and nature.  We worked to turn these words into the following Haiku.

Free to the public
The park's elegance so true
Filled with nature's glow
After the guest speaker finished his lesson and activities, we moved onto to the "Little World" activity.  The little world activity could have been done in the field near our school as we only needed a piece of ground to observe. Going to Delco Park gave us some room to spread out, nice facilities to learn in, and some exercise walking over and back.  The focus was to train our senses to observe details on a smaller and smaller scale. With good focus on the task, this activity could be done in about 30 minute. In order for you to better understand this activity, it is easier to simply give you the instructions provided by the teacher.

“Step 1:

Mark off a single square foot of ground [we just estimated this part while trying to avoid the bird poo which was everywhere, at least around the lake].

Step 2:

Look at the ground you marked off from a standing position.  Notice what you see, and describe the area.

Step 3:

Kneel down and describe it from that vantage point.  Notice the things that you missed when you were standing. Notice how the square patch of ground begins to take on more interesting aspects as you get closer.

Step 4:

Lie on your belly and explore the enclosed area in detail. Look at it as though you were an astronaut on a strange planet. If you find something in that square foot – an insect, worm, or plant – that captures your imagination, follow it/observe for as long as you like. Don’t analyze it, just experience and appreciate the difference.”  Pulled from Exercise 2-5: "Small World" by Tom Brown, Jr.

So now that you understand the procedure, I hope you can understand that it wasn’t a very complex activity.  My square foot of land was on the shore of the lake.  Standing I observed rocks, water, grass, a stick and a dog that walked through my square.  Kneeling, I saw ants, spiders, spider webs, and aquatic plants.  While lying down, I watched the spider building it's web.  This activity gave me a different perspective on small parts of the park.

 I really liked this outside activity and overall had a pretty good time.  Once we were done with the activity, we were allowed to just hang out and enjoy being outside with our friends.

* Haiku is a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world.  In our haiku's, you didn't have to write about the natural world but what fit the three random words you had.

Day 1

Today we focused on introducing our selves to the other people in our Intersession.  But after a bit of introductions we did an ice breaker that had us race and cross a river with just four pieces of wood without touching the ground "water".  This activity is displayed in the picture as i was working with my team to make in across the "water" with our technique that simple worked like a train that picked up tracks and laid them out afterwards.  In the end my group won by the skin in our chin which is not a lot.

Once we had finished this we got to meet Scott Geisel who taught us about Nature writing and provided some examples of this type of writing and practice time to try this style.