Olivia’s Nature’s Classroom Post

At my school, when you’re in the grades 6-7 you go to a place called Nature’s Classroom. It is a place  in Becket, Massachusetts where you get to learn about nature and how to work in a team. It is out in the woods. You sleep in a cabin for three nights.  There are lots of fun activities that require teamwork and strategy. Also there were activities that helped you learn about nature.

 

There was a game that we played called Predator v.s Prey. This game was a simulation for the food chain. I really liked it because I got  to feel what it feels like to be a animal. I also really liked it because at the end of the game there were only four people left. Those four people were my really good friends. We also had something called field group. You go to your field group a couple times every day. In our field group we played a game called Camouflage.

 

Camouflage is a game where you have to hide from your field group leader, and then he/she had to try to find you. All the groups played a little bit of a different way. I really liked this activity because you had to use strategy about where you were hiding. That’s not all we did in field groups, we also got to learn about nature. We saw many trees and learned a lot about them. We also looked at animal tracks. Looking at animal tracks was fun because now you can look outside and find a track and know what it came from. Overall It was a very fun trip!  

 

Elizabeth’s Nature’s Classroom Post

In the Middle School, there are 3 grades, 6th 7th and 8th. The 6th and 7th grade go to a place in Massachusetts called Nature’s Classroom. Nature’s Classroom is almost like a big fun camp in the woods. You do all sorts of fun activities and learn how to be nice to nature. Since I am in 6th grade I went to Nature’s Classroom this year.  

 

I had known about this trip since the beginning of the school year.  I remember my brother had gone so I kind of knew what would happen. He told me that it was lots of fun! The 6th and the 7th grade had met a couple of times and talked about what would happen. Since the 7th grade had been the year before they told us what it was like. They had all kinds of crazy fun stories to tell. When they were talking about it they said all these things to do and not to do which was very helpful.

 

Finally, it was the day to go to Nature’s Classroom! Of course we had had a perfectly warm winter and the night before we were supposed to go we had a huge snow storm. But it did not affect our plans because we went anyway, although we left 3 hours late! When we got there I could already tell I was going to have a fun time! Over the course of 4 days we played awesome games and we had fun outdoor winter activities to do.  At the end of the 4 days I was sad to go but I remembered I would come back next year!!

Joanie’s Nature’s Classroom Post

Nature’s Classroom is something like a retreat for all ages.  It was so much fun. We played a bunch of fun games and my favorite game was Camouflage. Camouflage is a game where your field group leader said the word camouflage then we all had to go hide and we had 10  seconds to hide. Once we were all hidden, Sassafras our field group leader would try to find us but she could not take any steps. I really like Sassafras, because she was really nice!

 

I also really liked hanging out in our bunk. I don’t really know why but it was just really fun. We had so much fun, and Eden having her spaz at 5 in the morning Maya saying, “Eden are you ok?!” Then she woke me up so we all got up on Olive’s top bunk and started to sing “Do you want to Build  a Snowman?” Then at about 5:30 we all  got up and took showers. I can’t wait to go back next year!
My favorite memory from the trip was probably singing “Do You Want To Build A Snowman?” At 5 in the morning. I think I really got to better know the people in my bunk. We also played a lot of fun do you know me game and stuff like that! Over all I had a really great time at Nature’s Classroom and I can’t wait to go back next year!

Annie’s Nature’s Classroom post

April of 2016 we went to Nature’s Classroom for 4 days. Nature’s Classroom is a place where kids come to play outdoors and have fun! It was so much fun! I had a hilarious group of girls in my bunk! In my buck there was Joanie, Olivia, Olive, Eden, Maya, Neha, Elizabeth and me. It was great to have all my really good friends in one bunk.

We were all feeling pretty homesick, but we cheered each other up by telling jokes and putting on little skits. I warmed up to the fact that I was in another state than my parents pretty quickly. If you were to ever go there you have to eat at least one meal there. I loved their food! Nature’s Classroom’s food is way better than ours at PDS  and it was a nice change.

Everyday we would go on a hike with our field group leader. My leader was Kelly. She was so nice. She taught us how to play a game called Camouflage. How the game works is when you least expect it someone would say, “CAMOUFLAGE!” and you would have 10 seconds to find a hiding spot anywhere in the woods. I love Camouflage, and one of the reasons is because I’m undefeated! Kelly also taught us how to make paint out of charcoal, and we got to put it all over our faces!

The best thing I learned there was probably how to make a fire, or how to clean my face with food lying around the house, or how to build and awesome dome! I don’t know what the best part was, but I do know that I learned and ton. You should visit it’s amazing!

Nature’s Classroom – By Bode

Nature’s classroom was AWESOME. At the start of Nature’s Classroom we had to take the long bus ride. It was 4 hours. We got to watch a movie called The Navigator. I was sitting next to my friend, Caidin. We talked for the bus ride mostly. Then we finally got there. I was excited to start.

 

We got out of the bus and put all our bags in a big line. Then we all circled up with the counselors. They all introduced themselves and I noticed something. They had some weird names! Like one of their names was Bloodhound. Then I realized they were fake names. We got into our bunks and then learned about what we were going to be doing and the schedule. We had breakfast lunch and dinner every day. The food was good, and we were having a great time.
Each day we chose some classes to do. My favorite one was when we went hiking with my counselor Nicky D. We had these things called Field Groups. We went and did activities with them every day too. We had this thing called Wednesday Night Live which was we had to make a skit and perform it. I wasn’t there unfortunately because I had ski nationals and had to leave early. Overall I had a great time and learned a lot of things. I can’t wait till next year!!

Nature’s Classroom – By Isaac

Over the first week of April, my classmates and I went on an adventure to the far off lands of Becket, Massachusetts. We all had different visions of how everything would play out, and I personally thought that NC (an abbreviation for Nature’s Classroom) would be more outdoorsy than it was. I thought that we would be spending pretty much the whole time outside, but we had ½ hour to 1 hour breaks between our classes, and our classes were mostly inside. The journey there was one of the best, and we got to watch movies on the big coach bus and talk with friends. The 7th graders who had already done it last year told us rumors like ghosts that people believed, and that freaked some people out but excited others, like me.

 

After the long journey, we had to stand out in the cold for a long time and play a game in the snow (great time to wear my sneakers, eh?) and we were assigned bunk rooms after that in our grand cabin. Shortly after that, we had our first mealtime where a lot of things were introduced to us, including how our classes and field groups would be working out. It didn’t make so much sense to me. We were introduced to waitronning. Then we did a team building activity after dinner, a “quest”. That night, someone was shining their flashlight a lot and kept everybody up until like 11:00. The next morning was my one and only waitron* shift. That day we were supposed to do an Oregon Trail simulation in real life, where we pretended we were a wagon of people and we were going to Oregon, facing obstacles along our way**. I wasn’t really listening, and I regretted that later because I didn’t know what we were doing for a bit. Sadly, that happened the next day. We had 3 classes where we learned about meditating, rockets, and forest fires in hands-on ways. That night we got to sleep well after our quiet sing along session where we sang some of my favorite songs, such as Riptide and Woody.

 

The morning after that, we woke up and had a field group*** outing, and rehearsed a play for Wednesday Night Live****. Then we had lunch, and right after we started away on the trail to Oregon City. We portrayed the farmers, the poorest of the groups, and we ended up all freezing to death the stop before Oregon City. We were very mad, but we had fun so we got over it. Later, we had one more class. It was how to eat healthy and live forever by not eating preservatives. We made mini treats for that, and they were fun and yummy. Soon after dinner came Wednesday Night Live, a series of mini plays where each field group performs a skit and that’s what we were planning out before. I ended up getting my shoe thrown across the room by a staff member, but that was fine. Our play was about making a commercial and all the attempts. At the very end when we got it perfect, the cameraman said he wasn’t filming. That was the punchline. We went to sleep for our last night before the day we headed home

 

In the morning, we had a last field group meeting where we recieved beads of kindness (called IALAC beads*****) We then played a game called Predators vs Prey. I started out as a centipede, the lowest in the food chain, but as I was eaten I ended up becoming a snake, or whatever ate me. That game wasn’t super fun, but it was semi-enjoyable. Then we had to pack up and go home.

 

*Just so you know, a waitron is like a waiter who helps clear the tables and set them and stuff

**More information coming

***Field group is sort of our group for hikes and stuff

****Which will be explained later

*****Stands for: I am loving and caring, Individuals all learning as [a] community, and other things

Maya Nature’s Classroom

I really liked Nature’s classroom. We were there Monday through Thursday and I say overall, it was pretty fun. I had some homesickness but I got over it. My favorite thing to do was make H20 rockets. My rocket was named BVB (after Black Veil Brides) and I made it with Caidin and Bella (some of my classmates.) It was really fun to make them and to shoot them up into the air. I also watched a squid get dissected.  I also got to see and touch everything in the squid.  

 

I really liked field groups. Field group is something that you do in the morning, and it’s usually a hike and a game. My field group leader was Garrett  a.k.a. Carrot. He took us off trail and we usually played games instead of hiking. Also he told very good stories and he thought that carrots and celery was dessert. My favorite activity to do was probably free time that we between classes and meals. In my bunk was Olivia, Annie, Olive, Eden and Joanie. We discussed how tired we were and how fun our classes were.

 

Overall I had a very fun time at Nature’s Classroom. The meals were good, even though you were assigned a table. At my table was Anna, Audrey, Eden and Justin and in my personal opinion that’s a pretty good table. The one bad side is that you can’t contact your parents, or listen to music. When I got home I blasted my music. I was never so happy to hear Andy Biersack’s voice that day. I would rate the trip a 9/10 and it would be a 10/10 if you could listen to music.

Yasmeen – Nature’s Classroom

Something that I really enjoyed was the food at Nature’s Classroom. Not only is their food really good but they have options for people who can’t eat pork (like me), or meat, etc. They have a great salad bar and their veggies were so crisp and fresh because they were picked fresh from the farm. My favorite meal that I had was the pasta and garlic bread. I liked how for breakfast you could have white milk,or juice. For lunch you aren’t allowed to have milk just water, and for dinner there was chocolate milk.

 

One of my favorite things that we did in Nature’s classroom would have to be Wednesday Night Live. I liked how I could express myself with my group anyway I want to. I thought the skit my group did was really funny. I got to be one of the main characters which was really fun.I also really enjoyed the teachers skit and how they pretend to be us. I had a lot of laughs and giggles on Wednesday Night Live.
My other favorite thing about Nature’s Classroom is when we went on the hike. I like this part because we went through some ups and downs, but we still had fun. One memory I will never forget about this hike is when Caidin fell into the stream, and when I was helping Milaura up a mountain of snow. My field group leader was Nicky D and he really showed me how to embrace nature. Overall, Nature’s classroom was a great experience and I can’t wait for next year!

Nature’s Classroom. By Justin

 When we went to Nature’s Classroom it reminded me of a camp/hotel kind of place. I was really excited and nervous to go. When I got to the parking lot at school to go I started to cry a little bit. Once I got into school I was fine for about ten minutes. Then every five minutes I would cry but not in a scared way.  When we put our stuff on the bus I was fine. When we got on the bus and after thirty minutes being on the bus I started to get really bad anxiety.

 

Twenty minutes later I started to calm down. We finally arrived at Nature’s Classroom in Becket Massachusetts. We went inside and found out our room number then unpacked some of our stuff and then went to dinner. After dinner we had transition time which is when we had 20 minutes to do whatever you need to do to get ready for your next class. The first night we had little fifteen minute classes with all of the group leaders.

 

After those classes we had singalong. That’s when some of the group leaders go up on the stage and sing songs with us. I didn’t really enjoy that because some of the songs that we sang were songs that I listened to with my mom and it made me think of her. So that me really sad. But afterwords I felt better. When we got back to our cabins My friends and I went to bed.

 

Overall I had a good time and a bad time at Nature’s Classroom.

Nature’s Classroom Blog By:Zach

 

Dragon Tree trevorklatko via Compfight

At the start of Nature’s Classroom,  I really didn’t want to go. I said goodbye to my mom and boarded the bus, thinking that this trip would last forever. It was a long trip because we left late due to the snow. We also got stuck behind a plow for one hour, but that is beside the point. When we finally arrived (around 4:30 p.m.),  we unpacked and began to eat dinner. And that is where the adventure of Nature’s Classroom started.

 

I remember, to my surprise, that I had a lot of fun that first night. We did a station rotation in groups. My favorite station was getting a marble in a bucket using pipes. All was going well at Nature’s Classroom, until it was time to fall asleep. After a long day, I was tired and got into bed early. We were allowed to stay up until 10 p.m., but all of the people were talking. Normally this would not be a problem, but there was no sound proofing in the building and there were 25 kids talking. Eventually, I fell asleep.

 

Day two started with breakfast. Since I am a vegetarian, I was concerned that there wouldn’t be good food options for my diet. But to my surprise, there were many options for vegetarians and for people who are gluten-free. I did the field group, which is like a small group hike. In the afternoon, I did “Oil Wars.” In this exercise, we used oil, water and money. Since oil isn’t renewable, it was the most valuable resource. Once it is gone, it is gone. I liked this exercise because it made me think about how these resources impact people’s lives and the decisions that governments make. I also took a class where a small group had to build a geodome. It required us to use geometry and made us think about the structural integrity of our build.

 

On day three, we had breakfast and we did my favorite activity. We went on a simulation of the Oregon Trail. In the simulation, we learned about buying a wagon, managing our resources and money and working as a group. The camp counselors played the role of people on the trail, including robbers. I really enjoyed the simulation and  thought that it was very educational. I learned that one out of 10 people died that went on the trail. My team did very well on this exercise. In the evening, I took a class called, “Back to Basics.” In this class, we learned how to start a fire using a bow drill and using flint and steel.  Both methods are harder than they look on TV.  We finished the day with “Wednesday Night Live.” Each field group did their own skit and the teachers also did a skit. The teachers did a great job.

 

On our last day there, we played a game called predator versus prey. There were several animals and they had to eat each other. I was a frog, but I was eaten by an animal that was higher up on the food chain. The bus ride home seemed to take forever, even though it was shorter than the trip there. It was great to see my parents and I was glad that I got to sleep in my own bed that night.
Overall, I really enjoyed the classes that were part of Nature’s Classroom. I think all the teachers were very nice. I am glad that Shirley, Emma, Jake and Malorie joined us. I like that PDS allows us to do unique experiences like Nature’s Classroom.