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Natures Classroom by Tess

tess1516 0 - NATURE'S CLASSROOM, 6th Grade Writers, Tess , ,

Nature’s Classroom is located in Becket Massachusetts. I would describe it as a sleep away camp, but it’s a little different. At Nature’s Classroom, you get to do all sorts of things like hiking, different fun activities and just hanging out with your friends. To get there, my class left at 1:00pm from school. We all fit on a giant bus with many different seats and even a bathroom. We arrived at 5:30pm, everyone was exhausted from the long 4-hour drive! We were all assigned bunks, and later on, we got to set our stuff down. This was pretty much our first day, there was not a lot going on because there wasn’t a lot to do considering it was so dark.

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Photo by Tess

Every day we would wake up at 7:00am. Everyone would get dressed, then go out for breakfast. Some people who needed to take meds or people who were Waitrons would leave a little early. After breakfast, we would have a break time to get ready for field groups. Most of the time my field group was out hiking, so we would be walking in ankle deep snow. Every day I would wear 3 pairs of socks, two pairs of pants and two shirts. It was that cold! We also played a game in field groups called camouflage. The leader of my group (Kelly) would scream Camouflage and she would count down from 10. Everyone had to hide and over time, she would find people.

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Picture by PDS

I think my favorite moment at nature’s classroom was a class I took called Hucking stuff. I arrived in the class thinking we would just be throwing things, but once we got there, it was so much more. It was a meditation class. I felt my body melt away into nothingness as my counsellor Kelly told us a story that made me go the deepest into my mind I’ve ever been. The story went a bit like this…

 

You walk into the dark forest. Everything is silent, the only sounds you can hear are the crunching of snow beneath your feet. You walk passed the water, and the trees. You soon come into an open field. You feel an emptiness inside you eating away at your courage. In the middle of the field, you see a black stone. It’s the heaviest thing ever and no one could ever lift it. You walk over to the stone and you lift it with no problem at all. Your feet carry you back to the river and you stand looking off into the distance. You throw the stone into the water. It shatters into a million pieces. You start to walk out of the forest, that spot in your stomach fades away.

 

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Picture by PDS

 

After doing the meditation we went outside into the dark cold woods and took an object we found. That object represented something bothering us in our lives. After finding the object we went to a high up deck and threw the object off. This was representing throwing away our fears, insecurities etc. A friend in my group’s item was a rock. He said something that will change my life. He told us about how his object was a rock and how it would never break, but somehow he could try. I don’t exactly remember what he said, but I know it really made me think. I hope you visit Nature’s Classroom sometime because it’s so much fun and I know you’ll like it!

Olivia’s Nature’s Classroom Post

olivia1516 0 - NATURE'S CLASSROOM, 6th Grade Writers, Olivia , , ,

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!