Day 4

Another snake but not venomous 

Today, we started off by a question: What is a community? My personal response was that a community is a group of people, animal, plants and bacteria that work together to achieve a certain goal. Students gave different opinions and then we discussed the question as a class.

afterwards we took off to the Aullwood Audubon. We divided into four groups and each group had someone that worked there.

There main job today was to walk as around answering any questions we had and also to explain about what they have there.

My team's leader was Mr. Tom. He introduced himself as an ornithology and that he had been working at Aullwood for about forty years now.

He walked us around today while describing the birds they have, plant, and other animals. Like I said, our main question was; What is a community. After talking about a community in class,

here at the Aullwood Audubon we compared communities. There was a wetland community, a field community. One of the best things I learned about was the Indigo Bunting. Here is a picture of it and some other creatures that we found today.

One of there Venomous snakes that they have

Baby Turtle

An Indigo Bunting

After that we came to school where we wrote our contemplation/meditation. Were read two examples, one being a meditation and the other being a contemplation. 

Then each individual had to choose what they wanted to write about. Personally I chose a contemplation because i thought it was easier. Here it is.

I am walking down the shore of lake Victoria, with a beautiful breeze and wind. I seem to like this place. i hear water splashing, sound like a long waterfall in the tropical forest, I smell fresh air, and as i am walking on the sand, i take a hand full of soil which the texture was so rough. I take a small piece of it and put it in my mouth. Doesn't taste like water, but surely close. I keep walking.

Dolphins are so cool, when you see them rounding the fish up, bringing them at the top of the lake and have a snack on them. you don't see them doing that do you? Probably not because this happens in the water. If you caught a dolphin it will be calling for help or even call their mothers. cause they can see humans beings. I wonder if they bite.

Under the water, there are so many fishes. so many different types of fish, they all have a way of surviving, just like humans. There are also corals, which are so beautiful and keep this world beautiful to see. There are very good animals, but sometimes could turn bad.

Day 3

Today we had so much fun at Cox Arboretum. We were given about two hours to walk around the park and take as many pictures as we could. That wasn't the task though. The task was: First we had to find at least 5 different trees, bark and leaves. Secondly, we had to find 1 picture of a creature. But for me I was luck enough to find couple creatures at the park Here are some of the pictures that I was able to find:

                                          

Lastly we did yoga as a whole class. We had someone that guided as through everything which made it more easier. I had a really great time today. Here are some additional pictures:

Day 2

Today we started off by reading take a closer look by Tom Brown Jr. The reading was basically how Tom Brown Jr started his nature writing career.

Then we walked all the way to Delco Park which was about four to five miles. The main point of this was for to be able to start our Nature writing skills which Scott Giesel taught us yesterday.

Today we focused on observation for the most part. When we arrived at Delco Park, we found our guest speaker there and he talked about how to write a haiku. His name was Rob E. Boley.

He started by talking about how writing haikus is really fun and how you like it once you start it. He then continued on explaining how long they are supposed to be and the contrasts between sentences.

He gave us an exercise where we had to pick three words from a magazine article and make a haiku from them. Mine was:
Money: Is an element of life

Elements: Of art

Climate: Changing over time.

I understand that it's not the best, but that was my first try and maybe I'll do better next time. Then he challenged us to do one that was a sentence dialogue.

We had to pick a sentence and do the same thing but as a dialogue. My sentence was really long which made me not finish it. Here is an example.

Such disturbed forests are often promoted by timber interests as vigorous and healthy, whereas mature forests are commonly perceived as unhealthy, wasteful and mismanaged resources.

Such; People are the ones struggling right now

Disturbed: By nature and such

Forests: Are the most amazing things in the whole world

Are: Also helpful to the environment

Often: Used for timber and fresh air.

Again, this isn't great but the more I do this, the better I get. We also had time to take a group picture.

Group picture 

After the guest speaker, we then started doing our observations.

Everybody went on their own to find their own observations. I went along with my friend Quan and we tried to find as many observations that we found.


We had a guideline that guided through how we were supposed to find observations. Here are some of the  Pictures that we observed.

Some cool flowers that we found

This is a dragon fly

When we came back from Delco Park, we played a game called Hershey kiss. Our teacher provided chocolate and we had to describe it's sound, sight, smell, taste and touch. Through the description we were able to make a Hershey kiss. Those were all the amazing things that we did yesterday.
                                                                     

Day 1

Today was the first day of my Stem-Mersion. We started off with a quote: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately by H.D. Thoreau which taught as the beauty of writing.

Then everyone spent a couple minutes thinking about what to live deliberately means.

After that we did an activity that introduced our classmates to us by drawing our palm and writing in who we are and what we like to do.

We also did an activity where we had two teams and we raced from one side of the classroom to the other using four woodblocks.

Before this we had gone over the syllabus and expectations of the class.

Then we had a guest speaker: Scott Giesel. He came and taught us how to start nature writing. Examples that he gave us were:
Start by being prepared (have your writing tools)
 make some observations
Meaning
Delivery