charlie and the moon.

It's Fall in Hideaway! Our jackets and rain boots line up by our front door, but we've only needed them about twice so far. The weather is still trying to decide what to do, but we are hopeful that temperatures will cool down and stay that way sometime soon. It's been a month since my last blog, and for that, I apologize. My October free time has been filled with trips to Austin and Dallas, football games, and catching up with friends. I have many pictures from these adventures, most of which I have uploaded to my shutterfly page, so check them out if you're interested. :) (I haven't uploaded anything from OU Weekend yet, but that's coming, so hang tight.)

Camp is busy, as always, and we are knee-deep in excited, energetic 5th graders. We are well into the season, and it is nice to finally have somewhat of a routine in place. I've taught enough now that I'm comfortable with the classes and curriculum, so I'm able to throw in my personality and have fun with it. I love teaching, and it is so fun to teach in this type of environment. I love getting to watch the kids "get it," and being able to make the material real to them in a way that isn't possible in their classrooms at school.

Most of the curriculum is the same as when I taught 5th grade in Austin during the 2010-2011 school year. For this, I am thankful, because I already have experience teaching it and am confident in my ability to do so. It is really cool to watch how differently the students respond to that material here as opposed to how my students in East Austin did. I honestly think it is because they are able to get out of their classroom for a few days and experience things in a new and different way. I wish my kiddos from Austin would have had the opportunity to attend an Outdoor Education program such as this.

In Austin, I worked with lower SES (socioeconomic status) students in one of the smaller public schools. Here, I work with public school and private school students from all areas of DFW and East Texas.  It has been interesting to have the opportunity to work with different types of students here than the ones I did before. I am learning a lot, and I feel like I am growing professionally as a teacher and personally as well.

I thought it might be cool to clue you in on some of the classes we teach the kiddos, so I'm going to try to do some highlights of each class over the next few weeks. No promises, but I'll do my best. :) Last week I had an opportunity to take pictures of some of our animals in the Nature Center here on camp, which is a "classroom" we use in a class called Expeditions.

Expeditions 
Expeditions is one of our most popular classes. Like all of the classes we offer, this is a three hour class. We have six sections, so that works out to about half an hour per section. The class is set up so that three of the sections are taught outside around camp, and three of the sections are taught inside our nature center.

Outside, we teach a section called "Ecological Succession," where we talk about how humans impacted this area to build Sky Ranch, and how the environment would rebuild itself if we left camp tomorrow and didn't come back. I usually talk to my students about the wildfires in Bastrop a few summers back, and I tell them about how the forests there are beginning to regrow themselves and rebuild that environment. Ecological Succession: the environment having success over what has happened to it. Write it down, there will be a test on this later. 

From there, we move on to a section called "Skulls." Here we show the students several different animal skulls and we discuss features of each. We spend a lot of time on structure and function, and we talk about how to tell if an animal is a predator or prey and whether it is a herbivore, carnivore or omnivore. They then get to look at skulls and make inferences (I always talk to them about what that means -- working on building an academic vocabulary!) about different animals based on what they observe. This part involves a real alligator skull, which is pretty legit if I do say so myself. No, I don't have pictures of that currently, but I'll work on it for you.

After Skulls, we head to a section about Decomposition and the Carbon Cycle. Students observe different samples of tree branches and leaves that are in the process of breaking down. We talk about decomposers and how they break things down over time. We discuss the difference between biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) material, and why these things break down differently. We go through the carbon dioxide/oxygen cycle, which is usually confusing for them, but it's really cool to see the light bulbs start turning on as we continue to go over it.

After we finish all of the outside sections, we move into the Nature Center. Here there are three different rooms - reptiles, mammals, and arthropods -- with lots of animals in each. Take a look!