Day 3 - Cox Arboretum

On day 3 of the "To The Wood" STEMersion, we traveled to Cox Arboretum Park to explore the natural environment around the park.

As we walked around the park, we spotted several trees and creatures around the park as shown below.

Leaf of a Oak tree

A very young Evergreen tree

An Austrian Pine tree

A Maple tree

Leaf of a Spruce tree

A bee collecting pollen

A goose walking bravely across the field of grass

A garden snake protecting its territory

A pretty little frog

As I walked around, I noticed many other interesting things, but didn't have enough time to take the picture. For example, I noticed a really small turtle eating the flowers from the branches that was in the water. I also seen a squirrel running into its hole as soon as it seen me.

Me and a few friends exploring the park

After exploring the place for three hours, we rest for a little bit before we did our yoga for the day to calm our mind down. I think I'm getting more familiar with yoga, and I could control my breathing pretty well now. Although it was pretty hot when we did yoga outside.

Day 2 - Delco Park

On day 2 of this course, we walked from our school to Delco Park, a two-miles walk.

 First, we had a guest speaker, Rob Boley, whom inform us more about writing, "Writing doesn't have to be work."

Then, we did an activity developing a haiku, a poem-like structure, to develops a short writing by starting with a few random words. This is one of the haiku that I wrote:

"Developers and curious

Owning the woodlands

In auction night at ground zero

light of celebrate."

Afterward, we did an exercise known as "Small World," where we used our observation skills on an 1-by-1 inch area to see new things that we never notice before. This is the environment that I observe:

I noticed that inside that above the dirt, there were large, black ants that was patrolling the place. Moving closer, I could see many small, much smaller than the black ants, feeding into the dirt. Sometimes, a little white bug would show up above the surface. Moving along the dirt, I spotted a tiny, golden, egg that sat firmly outside of the soil.

Then, we started walking home in time for lunch!

After lunch, we started the "Hershey Kiss" activity, where we used our observation skills again. This time, however, we uses all five of our sense on a very familiar object, the Hershey Kiss chocolate. I used metaphor to describe each of how I sense on the Hershey Kiss.

Afterward, we did yoga to calm down our mind after a very exciting day.

Day 1 - Introduction

Today, we started off with a quote from H.D. Thoreau, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately."

After that, we read a excerpt from Anne Lamott, "Looking Around," and figured out its message, "Slow down in life and you might notice something amazing."

Then, we went through the introductions with everyone and expectations for this course.

Next, we did a "team-building" activity where we need to bring everyone across the "lake" using four wooden platform.

Afterward, we had a guest speaker, Scott Giesel, who taught us about "nature writing." This is basically writing about nature, it can be poems, journals, or multimedia.

There are three steps to nature writing:

• First. Observations. Writing down specifics and details.
• Second. Meanings. The feelings, ideas, metaphors, personification, connections, and symbolism.
• Third. Delivery. Express the observations and meanings to everyone else.

The main idea that Scott wanted us to know is that "Get a journal, make observation, and delivers the meaning."

Finally, we did a "visualization" practice, where we were to nature write about a nature scene from our past experience. I wrote the following paragraph for this practice:

"It was on a normal day as any other day as I look out the window from my familiar room. Everything was nothing out-of-the-ordinary. Then, I notice a small blue-striped birds hopping form tree to tree while singing a melody that's very distinct, yet it was very vivid in my mind. A few minutes later, as the singing continues, another small, high-pitch melody responds back. As those melody goes back and forth, as if arguing with each other, I feel as if the world itself is alive."