Teaching, farm, fun games

This week our lesson had to focus on how we used water everyday, but in an abstract way. So not just looking at drinking water or using for cleaning. My team decided to make a game for our students to play. The game was called the Flow, and it had different types of water uses incorporated into it. The uses ranged from the everyday, like showering, brushing your teeth, going to the bathroom, to more complex ideas, like the amount of water that is used to make the food you eat, the clothing you wear, and different things you can buy. I was totally sure on how the students would like it, but they all really liked it. I was told in my last class that it was wicked awesome. It also got them thinking about how water is used, and how it's being polluted in different ways. I got a lot of good questions, especially when I would tell them that you use 22 gallons of water for every 5 minutes you take a shower. Some of the classes couldn't decide whether you were winning the game if you had the most water or the least. I told them that everybody won with this game, and that nobody lost. Of course, they still gave each other crap if they chose an option that used a lot of water. They also really enjoyed getting to measure the water into their jars as they went around the board. We were also told today that we were the best SCA group that Mrs. Signor had had in her class. They said that the entire time we were in the class we had the attention of all the students, and there were a lot less behavior problems when we were there than at other times. That makes me feel really good, because I feel like our lessons aren't even top notch, and that there's a lot more that we can be doing with the students.

Last weekend, I went to the Nelson farm with a large group of people from Bear Brook. It was really fun, because we're trying to set up a relationship with this farm where we donate our time to helping them with everything they need help with, and they supply us with some fresh vegetables when they can. We already got some cress from the farm from last weekend, which we used to cook with all this week. The owner of the farm, Shawn, needed the bed of cress pulled up, and told us that we could keep any of it that we wanted, and we took two giant bags full home with us. It was really awesome! I can't wait to go back again, but I'm not sure when that'll be. I'm thinking of going back Saturday, but I had a really tough week, and we start Wilderness First Responder Monday morning, and we don't get another break for 2 weeks when we get a 3 day weekend. It's going to be intense, but I'm so excited about it.

Yesterday, nobody went into schools even though the schools were open because we had a Bear Brook State Park snow day. The night before, one of the vans got stuck on a hill in the park, and so no vehicles could get out until the van was moved. After picking up the people from the van, they determined that it was going to be pretty tough to get the van moved, so that night they called a snow day for the next day. That was really nice because it gave my team more time to work on our game/lesson, as well as giving everybody a chance to sleep in and relax in the middle of the week. We had a giant snowball fight in the morning where I got pummeled with snow/ice balls. It was lots of fun, but I'm definitely completely bruised from all of the snowballs hitting me at crazy speeds.

Currently, I'm killing time in the Manchester Public Library between school and teen night tonight, which doesn't start until 6:30. My team and I are going to go get some food before teen night, since we won't be getting home until 11/11:30 tonight. It's going to be a crazy long day. Luckily there was a 90 minute delay today, so we didn't leave camp until 7:30 and not at 6:15, like we originally planned. Although, this did mean that we had shorter classes today at school, but we got to have a hot breakfast and didn't have to rush to get out the door like we would have needed to.

I have posted new pictures to facebook.