4-H Camp
I am going to admit that when I found out that I would be the parent chaperoning Maury on a three day, two night camping trip, I was less than thrilled. Now that I've been, I'm glad it was me!Maury and I arrived at the 4-H Camp near Columbiana on Wednesday around lunch time. The time we spent right after arrival and until they were ready for us to eat lunch was the only frustrating time. It was kind of hurry up and wait...which Maury does not do well. At about noon, we got our places in the cafeteria and were introduced to the 4H way of eating...and clean up. Very detailed, but, in short, the kids are in charge of serving the food (family style) and cleaning up. Very nice indeed.
After lunch, the group reported to the rec center and divided into their teams. There were five teams of kids with about 14 kids per team and about 4 adult chaperones. Each team would go to a different class and, by the close of camp on Friday, each team would have gone to each of the six different courses. The classes were taught by the 4H staff, which appeared to be largely made up of college students doing internships. Each instructor taught everything, which was impressive given the breadth of subject matter. For example, Cory and Lindsay were our instructors at our first class: rock climbing. (This was the only class with two instructors.) We saw Cory again for canoeing, but I know that other teams had Cory for neither of those classes, but for others such as herpetology.
Maury at the rec center, where we met before each class.
As I said, we had rock climbing first. A couple of the girls were able to make it all the way to the top of the wall. Maury didn't make it too high up, but he had fun anyway. I didn't try this one at all. I don't think my fingers would have appreciated me having them hold my weight up like that.
Before our next class, we returned to the rec center and were given a chance for "canteen" where the kids could buy a candy bar and a drink. (They had canteen a couple of times a day and, during one, they could buy 4-H souvenirs.) Then, we were on to herpetology with Lauren.
"What is herpetology?" you ask? Herpetology is the study of reptiles and amphibians. The term is from the Greek for "creeping animal". So, Lauren discussed with the kids the differences and similarities of amphibians and reptiles and then showed the kids various species. We saw frogs, toads, a salamandar, two different kinds of turtles, two different snakes and an alligator.
The funniest thing happened while we were in class. There was one snake (pictured below) that was very active in his enclosure. I was sitting very close to where he was and I looked over to see that he was climbing up the side of the box, and was then slithering across the top of it. I guess maybe he was able to stay up on the ledge above the sliding door opening to the box. Anyway, even the instructor got distracted by what he was doing. She stated, "I don't know what he is doing, but get ready for a loud THUD when he falls." Which he did. Crazy snake.
After class, it was dinner time. Spaghetti. Yum! Part of the clean up process at each meal was the collection of all food and drink that was not consumed. Anything still in the pitchers or on serving dishes was not included, but if it had been poured into a glass or put on a plate, it was. After dinner, they explained why: they were weighing the food waste. After each meal, they would tell us how much food was wasted and it really encouraged the kids to be more mindful of that. They also discussed why food waste was a bad thing. Nice lesson, I thought. The spaghetti dinner was our highest poundage: 15. Breakfast on Friday was less than 1 pound.
Wednesday night, the kids had the option of a few activities: fishing, miniature golf, basketball and volleyball. Maury tried fishing for a while and then we went up to miniature golf. We weren't there too long before I had to end his evening a little early because he was tired and, as a result, running around maniacally.
Thursday morning's first class was canoeing. I got in a canoe with Maury and one other Cardinal team member and we did pretty good! Canoeing is not intuitive and I spent most of the time really having to concentrate since I was the captain. But, I had a good team and we went straight most of the time. The only problem was when we lost one paddle, but another canoe helped us out and we were good to go again.
After lunch, the next class was Macro Invertebrates with Chris. This was the class that we had heard the most about before the trip. After some in-class learning about the types of critters we were going to go look for, we headed down to the lake. In the past, the 4-H Camp didn't provide rubber boots for the kids, so this was very messy because they wade into the lake, scoop up detritis from the bottom of the lake and then look through it for macro invertebrates (crayfish, dragonfly larva, aquatic worms). Ewww! But, there I was, right with the kids doing this. The kids loved it when Chris described the cafeteria tray and ice cube tray as "scientific tools" because that, along with nets, is what we were using. We then went back to the class and talked about what we found and how what we found told us how healthy the lake was.
Then, we were on to orienteering with Lauren. I finally know how to use a compass! I knew the theory, but no idea how that would get you anywhere! The kids were divided into teams, were given directions to follow, and after doing some division to calculate how many paces for each of the distances (based on their average pace length), they were off to gather parts of quotes on the course.
Thursday night was my favorite part: Raptor Trek. Becky, who is a full time employee at the 4-H Center, brought four beautiful raptors to show the kids. She showed us a hawk (in the first photo with an assisting instructor, Chris), a falcon, and two owls. She was very funny and informative, telling us how each bird came to live at the 4-H Center. Two of the birds were there because of, well, humans. The hawk had been taken in by humans as a baby bird and is so irreversibly imprinted to humans, he can't live on his own. One of the owls had been hit by a car after going after a rabbit or mouse that was going after food thrown out of a car. (That is what she called igniting the food chain.) The picture I have of Becky and the owl is not good, but I wanted to have her here because she was really great!
Friday was our last day and we had one class left: GPS. Misshon talked to the kids about early navigational tools like the astrolabe, the sextent and the compass. Maury is the kid in the group, by the way, that always has his hand up to give an answer or ask a question. That is fine, of course, unless you don't have anything actually formulated to answer or ask! You could have knocked me over with a feather, then, when, after 2 days of this, he answered, "When was World War I?" close to correctly. I mean, he said 1922 and she was trying to get the kids to answer 1919. (I just realized that I have no idea what 1919 had to do with anything.) Oh well...I was impressed. Then, we went out on a course, not unlike the compass course. We didn't do too well. The GPS doesn't work in a way that makes sense to me, so we walked in circles a lot. At one point, one of our team members almost walked right off the side of the walkway into the creek because he was going to follow that arrow, by God!
Our classes over, we returned to the cafeteria for one last meal (the only meal that I didn't personally enjoy: sloppy joes). We took some team pictures and the kids loaded back up on the buses to return to school.
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posted by Terri Milstead @ 4:56 PM
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