Post by RickW on Mar 14, 2009 21:40:34 GMT -5
I just spent the last four days with middeldottir, (yes, Bill, I love those terms,) on a fabulous school field trip to Bamfield Marine Research Center. It's on the outer coast of Vancouver Island, as wild a place as you can find, at the end of a two hour drive over dirt roads. There is an astounding quantity of life on the coast here, so much that the local natives had possibly the most advanced culture of any hunter gatherer society in the world - they had so much food easily available, that they had months every year when they had leisure to do as they pleased. Not bad living.
The Marine Science Center is run by 4 universities, and provides research and educational facilities. The facilities were first class, food and accommodations excellent. The kids were out in the boat dredging plankton, viewing said plankton in microscopes, doing experiments on and touching/learning about marine life, going on a long beach walk with amazing tide pools, sat lots of excellent lectures and interactions, and gave presentations of their own, in various formats, including singing and dancing. And it's one of the most beautiful places in the universe. This is the kind of thing all kids should be able to do. These kids are 13, they are polite, amazing, and very well behaved, and ate it all up.
Following is Middeldottir, (Aidan,) posing by the tidepool she and a friend were observing:
After the above observation, the kids had to do a presentation in song, dance, whatever, on what they saw. You can see some of the amazing scenery:
And they did a bunch of lab work. Here's they're passing a sea cucumber around. Tough tell how the cucumber felt about it, but the kids thought it was pretty cool:
A simply super week. Busy, helping ride herd on 40 13 year olds, but like, totally awesome.
The Marine Science Center is run by 4 universities, and provides research and educational facilities. The facilities were first class, food and accommodations excellent. The kids were out in the boat dredging plankton, viewing said plankton in microscopes, doing experiments on and touching/learning about marine life, going on a long beach walk with amazing tide pools, sat lots of excellent lectures and interactions, and gave presentations of their own, in various formats, including singing and dancing. And it's one of the most beautiful places in the universe. This is the kind of thing all kids should be able to do. These kids are 13, they are polite, amazing, and very well behaved, and ate it all up.
Following is Middeldottir, (Aidan,) posing by the tidepool she and a friend were observing:
After the above observation, the kids had to do a presentation in song, dance, whatever, on what they saw. You can see some of the amazing scenery:
And they did a bunch of lab work. Here's they're passing a sea cucumber around. Tough tell how the cucumber felt about it, but the kids thought it was pretty cool:
A simply super week. Busy, helping ride herd on 40 13 year olds, but like, totally awesome.
