We began the day bright and early, with a 5:00am meet up time at CRS.
Our students arrived prepared and excited. We boarded our bus and began the trip to Maine!
It was a fun bus ride featuring a visit to the West Gardiner, ME rest stop where we took our first official group photo of the trip.
Sixth grade co-teachers Cindy and Chris have been hard at work planning for this trip for months.
We arrived mid-morning to the Schoodic Education Adventure (SEA) program located on the Schoodic Peninsula in Acadia National Park.
We worked up an appetite on the journey and enjoyed our lunch upon arrival.
We dropped our bags in our rooms in the bunk house and headed out to learn more about the program from our park ranger, Alexa.
Alexa will be guiding us through our trip and exploration during our time at SEA. She shared with us about the Acadia land acknowledgement and the Leave No Trace principles, highlighting the sixth principle about protecting animals.
Students had time to ask Alexa their questions and learn more about the mission of the Schoodic Institute.
We then dove into our first activity: Map Mystery!
The activity introduced our students to metric mapping and put our skills to the test as we plotted resource site coordinates on a giant 30-foot floor map.
Through a series of clues and props, students combined habitat and historic site information and discussed the current resource protection issues they discovered.
After we solved our map project, it was time to adventure on the Forest Diversity Hike.
The hike offered students the opportunity to become familiar with a wide range of ecological community changes and methods for examining and measuring those changes.
Students became researchers, digging into measuring and identification work.
We learned how to use a dichotomous key to identify trees and learn the different parts of the forest structure (ground cover, under story, and canopy);
learned how to determine position via topographical maps; plotted data collection sites; recorded observations; and participated in student research teams to investigate percent cover and measure understory!
We learned how to spot, define, and compare different types of tree leaves by looking at natural geometry.
We also found this little spruce growing IN a birch tree!
After our hike, we enjoyed some down time to reflect in our pocket journal about our observations and experiences. We captured memories, images, and experiences from today.
Students wrote one thing they loved,
one thing they learned,
and one thing they’re looking forward to.
Dinner was devoured in the on-site cafeteria where we will be enjoying our meals. Tonight we had lasagna, broccoli, and Hawaiian rolls. After fueling up, we ended the day with an interactive art program.
An instructor led us through a print making class!
Students got to create designs of their choosing and let their experiences that day guide them.
It was a great way to wind down and build community with one another and student advisors.
We capped off a fantastic first day together in the bunkhouse.
