We coasted through this work week. We were asked to come down early. Truth be told, we could have come a week later and done our duties without failing. Programs for each grade (pre-K through 4) are already designed. Most of the programs are pretty good, but we had to overhaul one activity. The program is about how animals adapt to their environment. It included the “5 bucket” game. Each bucket has 4 clues. Kids are supposed to use the clues to guess the animal. It’s not a bad idea, but most of the clues weren’t about animal adaptations. One of the clues was totally ridiculous. Our new game has better clues, each of which addresses one part of the animal’s adaptation to its environment.
Monday we will have our official orientation. This is where we are corralled into a room. We are supposed to keep our eyes open until lunch, when we are released. Tuesday we attend a program offered by a full time ranger. Wednesday and Thursday we will sink or swim. Each day we will receive about 90 kids. The kids are divided into 3 groups. The groups will rotate through 3 programs. One is a session is led by the teacher. The second is a forest walk, led by a ranger. Danita and I will lead a beach walk. So we will do 3 beach walks Wednesday, 3 more Thursday. The beach walk is pretty easy. We talk about mole crabs, ghost crabs, and sand dunes. We let the kids run around barefoot in the sand. We dig in the sand, sift it in sand sifters, and look at the sand with magnifying glasses. I’m pretty sure the kids would be happy just to run around for an hour. There is one part of the program we won’t do. Some of the smallest sand particles are black. These are magnetite. We were told the magnetite could be picked up with a magnet. That didn’t work. Then we were told the sand had to be totally dry for this to work. We dried some sand. Totally dry. It still didn’t work. I tried using a horseshoe magnet and a metal bar, with a small gap on one side to focus the magnetic field. It still didn’t work. We had some plastic covered “wand” magnets that a few particles would stick to, but that could have been from static electricity. It didn’t impress us. It certainly wouldn’t impress 30 4th graders. It has nothing to do with the theme (what a plant or animal needs to live on the sea shore.) It’s off the program.
Yesterday was quite nice — Sunny, 65, and a slight breeze. We have a very large screened porch on the back of our house. We opened the back door and aired the house. We spent the morning cleaning the house and porch. I took a bike ride in the afternoon. Danita did a little riding and some yoga. Then we kicked back and enjoyed the beautiful weather.
Today after Church (in Ocean City) we visited the Life Rescue museum, about how people were rescued from ships that foundered off the shore. We saw life saving equipment and techniques used 150 years ago. Then we walked out onto the boardwalk and watched the kite convention. We saw plenty of kites, including some synchronized kite flying. We were inspired to buy a tacky whirley twirley. The bicycle theme suites me; the pink flamingo is a Baltimore thing. (You can also see part of our porch and our Internet satellite dish.) For lunch, we stopped by the Island Creamery in Berlin on the way home. They have the best ice cream we have ever had. Their “one scoop” cup has as much ice cream as anybody else’s 3-scoop jumbo. I can’t begin to imagine what their 2-scoop cup must have.
We’re looking forward to traveling to Jul’s next weekend for Elizabeth’s First Communion. We will leave Thursday and take a day of “vacation” Friday. Stand by for grand-kid pics next week.