Day 4: Whitewater Rafting and The Beast
Students from Louisiana's Oil City Elementary School spent a week at Cal-Wood Education Center in the Rocky Mountains. The students from Oil City, a Project Learning Tree (PLT) GreenSchool, raised money to fund their trip. Our guest blogger Elizabeth is a 7th grader at the school and her teacher, Cindy Kilpatrick, is a 2011 PLT National Outstanding Educator.
Today is Thursday, day four of Cal-Wood. Today we woke up early because we had a great day planned: whitewater rafting!!!!!
This was my first time rafting so I was really excited. We climbed in the vans to go to the river. We were all so ready and excited!
When we arrived, we put on our wetsuits (watching us put them on must have been a sight) and listened to the safety lecture. Then we piled into vans and headed off to the river--FINALLY!
Once there, we split into five groups, and got into our rafts. Another safety lecture and then we were off! I had such a blast sitting in the front of the raft, even though I was wet and cold. On our second round, we were allowed to jump into the 42 degree water. Of course I jumped. You don’t realize how cold that water is until you are submerged in it. It was really, really cold! I was in for about 30 seconds before I wanted to get back in the raft.
After our river trip, we dried off and went back to Cal-Wood for our next team-building activity called The Beast. With The Beast, you have a team of five people: two builders, a buyer, an observer, and a messenger. Each person has a role to play to construct a mock image of "The Beast".
Communication is key. The observer explains what an object looks like, the messenger tells the buyer, and the buyer gets the materials and tells the builder what to do with them. I was the messenger. This activity showed us the important of teamwork. I really enjoyed it.
Photo credit: Cindy Kilpatrick
