Outdoor Education Journal
By: Chase
Day 1
The bus ride was pretty long but me and my friends had fun. When we got to the place, we had to carry all of our luggage to our dorms. Then we went to play at the park. After that, we went to the Big field for some big group activities. The first thing we did was, separating ourselves from who wants to be swimming in the ocean with nemo or living on top of a snowy mountain. I picked nemo because I would like to see all of the wildlife of the ocean. Then they told us to do the motion of our favorite sport. I pretended like I was shooting a basketball. Then we did the same thing except it was for pets. I did dog. Then we played a game called aussie ball. It was a game that you have to throw a fox tail and run around a circle as many times as you can. It was a lot of fun. Then we broke up into our regular groups and we got caitria to be our leader. The first game we played was a game called magic door. We had to make sure that everyone on our team made it through, that we did it on consecutive rotation, that we had to do it in groups of 3,4,5 and 6. We had to listen to others, talk, problem solve, work together and try our hardest to accomplish our goal. Team building was so much fun. I loved it because everyone had a say on how we would accomplish our goal.
Artist, Charlie F and I walking to the Big Field
Day 2
We all woke up and we went to eat breakfast. My friends and I were mostly excited for the archery. Our schedule went like this, Games in the gym, Archery, Nature, Lunch in the cafeteria, Orienteering with compasses, fishing and then group games.
Day 2: Games
Games was really fun. We played a game called Ultimate Nerf and it was kind of like football with some restrictions. The restrictions were that we couldn’t run with the ball and that we can’t pass to the same person twice in a row. This game needed teamwork because we needed to find a way to get to the end-zone without the other team stealing it. Games were amazing. The other game was kickball. It was a lot of fun to play kickball.
Day 2: Archery
Me shooting my bow
Archery for me was a lot of fun. It was my first time shooting a compound bow and I'd say that I am a pretty fast learner. When the person blew the whistle once, I had to go and stand in ready position in front of my bow. She blew the whistle twice and we had to nock the bow. That means that we had to put the clip of the bow on the string where we release. We had to make sure the different colored fletching was facing up. The fletchings are the different feather things that are towards the end of the arrow. Then she blew the whistle three times, indicating that we were allowed to shoot. I shot the bear in the neck, the butt, the ear and the leg. After we shot all of our arrows, we had to go take our arrows out of the target and walk back and say "Gobble, Gobble, Gobble" or else we would have to go back and do it again. I had an amazing time doing that. It was my favorite activity we did the whole day.
Day 2: Nature
Brian Lee and I doing the blindfold activity and him pushing me down the hill. Just kidding, I fell
Nature was not what I was expecting it to be. I thought we would just sit and learn about different animals but we actually got to do pretty fun activities. Like they taped our hands so that we couldn't use our thumbs and then they threw candy at us and saw us trying to get the candy and unwrap the candy and eat the candy. I gained a sudden respect for squirrels that day. We did this other activity that was really fun to. The picture above was taken during this next activity I am going to talk about. Okay, so we were testing our senses and we were looking to see how hard it was to not use one of our senses. It was pretty hard to do things without seeing where you are going. Then was an activity where we had to use our sense of smell. We went into the woods, where Ms. Wright had hid some candy and put them under leaves and stuff like that. She sprayed them with peppermint spray so we had to smell it to find it. It was a lot of fun.
Day 2: Aquatic Studies
For me, Aquatic studies wasn't that fun. All we did was travel like a drop of water, put trash in water and test the ph levels of the lake water. For the drop of water thing, I pretty much stayed at clouds. For the put trash in water thing, I put little pieces of paper in there. It was supposed to represent picnic and it was kind of fun to see what the water turned into after all that stuff got dumped into it. When we were testing the ph levels of Kishwauketoe, that is the name of the lake, we poured water in a cup and put a slip of ph paper in there and it did not have a high ph level. That is probably one of the reasons that lake Kishwauketoe is the second cleanest lake in Wisconsin.
Day 2: Orienteering
Orienteering was way way more fun than I thought it was. I thought we would just sit around learning about compasses but we got to travel through the woods, finding our way with our compasses. We also did this penny activity where we listened to instructions from Mr. Ogden and we pretty much walked in a big circle to get back to our pennies. I lost my penny once but found it the second time. After that we did the woods activity. We did really bad but it was still fun. We were given a sheet of paper that had instructions on it. It told us how to get out of the woods and back to the field. At the end of every instruction, we should have found a letter of the alphabet like g or c. It is possible you saw the wrong letter because you did the instructions wrong, which we did. We got every single letter wrong and still came out the wrong way. We were supposed to start at oak and end at walnut but we started at Oak and ended in maple. We didn't do it right but it was still fun!
Day 2: Fishing
Matthew, William, Brian Lee and I on the deck
Fishing wasn't as exciting as Archery or Orienteering but it was still a lot of fun. The first 20 minutes was spent teaching us how to put worms on the hook. He had to each put a worm on the hook. It was completely disgusting. Right when I put mine on my hook, it started just randomly pooping. It pooped a lot. Anyway, I had to put the worm on straight and the hook had to go right through the worm, like right in the center of it. I am not usually an animal person but I don't like watching them suffer. That was probably my least favorite part of the whole trip; putting that worm on the hook. The fishing part was fun though. It requires a lot of patience but I have a lot of patience.
Day 3
I woke up and I was both excited and scared at the same time, that doesn't happen to me a lot but I was afraid of being high up but I was excited to do the zip-line because I have done zip-lining once before and I know how it is.
Day 3: High Ropes
That's me up there doing the balance beam really high up. I was terrified
This part was absolutely insane and really really scary. I for one have no balance and as you can see, I was on a really high balance beam. I don't know how high it actually was but when you're up there, it feels as if you were at least 50 feet up and if you're afraid of heights, like me then this is not for you. The first time is the scariest but after a couple times, it gets less scary and actually a lot of fun. Like after I did the balance beam for the first time, I did it again and it was less scary. After that I did the standing swings and that was really wobbly but a lot of fun. I ended up really liking the high ropes course. I learned that if you step outside your comfort zone you'll really love it.
Day 3: Zip-line
That's me having a lot of fun on the zip-line
The zip-lline is kind of a roller coaster both physically and mentally because when you are climbing, you have to test your physical ability by reaching up and keep going to the top and mentally by telling yourself that you can do it and that you're almost done. On the actual zip-line, you are practically on an actual roller coaster because you go up and down really fast. Mentally because when you jump off and you're on the zip-line you can be scared or excited or calm, whatever you are, it's your choice and you can pick if you want your mind to be up or down or slow or fast. That's how life is and how the zip-line is.
THE END
