Posts brought to you by Kimberly and Tavonda:
"Day 5 definitely brought something new to our entire camping experience. To start the day, as usual we set up the boat, did some daily tests and sailed the shores of Chesapeake bay.
Then when we arrived at the campsite we got in our bathing suits and trunks and went canoeing. It was so much fun especially since I had never been canoeing. A lot of us tipped and had to get back up! After canoeing we met at a different camping site than the day before and we ate a great dinner, which was stir-fry chicken, steamed vegetables and rice.
But what about the fireworks to celebrate the patriotic day of the 4th of July? We did not have fireworks, but as Captain Kate would say, Mother Nature brought us her fireworks. So as we sat in the opened pavillion, we stared at the heavens while lightning strode from place to place."
- Kimberly
Now for Day 6...
"In the morning we set the boat to sail to Kent Island. Kent Island was fun. When we got here we set up the tents, then washed the dishes to start dinner. For dinner we made pizza, it was the best of all. Next, we went to go see some owl's habitats. It was pretty fun. When we got back to the camping site we got to call home. That was a little fun too. Then, we made s'mores. They were good. I never had them before. Finally, we ended the day with making a group circle and saying why we appreciate the person to the right of us. That night there was a huge thunderstorm. I was so scared! But, I lasted through the night even when a spider crawled on me."
- Tavonda
All right, thanks kids! We're on our way to Rock Hall from Kent Island as I type this, so we'll let you know how the rest of our day goes.
Over & out,
Jordan
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Friday, July 4, 2008
Second post today!
Ahoy again! In the interest of getting all of you at home caught up with us in real time, here's another post, brought to you by Norah, describing our day yesterday. Here ya go:
"Yesterday, we sailed from Horn Point to St. Michael's. On the boat, we split up into our two watches and we switched between learning with James and being on watch. When we were learning we learned about plankton and how it affects the food chain. We caught some plankton using a special net and looked at it under the microscope. It was cool! We caught mostly copepods.After talking about the very limited features of the many types of plankton, we got to design our own and make it out of play-doh. After that the watches switched roles. On watch we did bow watch, navigatino, boat check, and steering helm.
Once we arrived at St. Michael's, we went to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, where we completed a scavenger hunt while looking for information on our final project, skits on oystering in the 19th, 20th, and present centuries (editor's note: these are the right centuries, we accidentally included 18th on the last post). It had history all the way back to the Native Americans. We had many adventuresincluding one group losing all their water bottles and finding them!
When we got to the campsite, which was on the museum grounds, we set up tents and played a few games. For dinner we had spaghetti. After dinner, we went on a walk for a surprise. It was ice cream! It finished up a great day for CTY and we were ready to go to sleep."
- Norah
All right! Thanks Norah. Consider yourselves updated. Enjoy the fireworks and we'll be back tomorrow!
-Jordan
"Yesterday, we sailed from Horn Point to St. Michael's. On the boat, we split up into our two watches and we switched between learning with James and being on watch. When we were learning we learned about plankton and how it affects the food chain. We caught some plankton using a special net and looked at it under the microscope. It was cool! We caught mostly copepods.After talking about the very limited features of the many types of plankton, we got to design our own and make it out of play-doh. After that the watches switched roles. On watch we did bow watch, navigatino, boat check, and steering helm.
Once we arrived at St. Michael's, we went to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, where we completed a scavenger hunt while looking for information on our final project, skits on oystering in the 19th, 20th, and present centuries (editor's note: these are the right centuries, we accidentally included 18th on the last post). It had history all the way back to the Native Americans. We had many adventuresincluding one group losing all their water bottles and finding them!
When we got to the campsite, which was on the museum grounds, we set up tents and played a few games. For dinner we had spaghetti. After dinner, we went on a walk for a surprise. It was ice cream! It finished up a great day for CTY and we were ready to go to sleep."
- Norah
All right! Thanks Norah. Consider yourselves updated. Enjoy the fireworks and we'll be back tomorrow!
-Jordan
4th of July post!
Hello and happy Independence Day. First off, many apologies for the last post which contained an error of omission- NORAH!! Norah is with us and doing great as a member of Pokemon watch. My fault on that one, should have double-checked the name lists. Anyways, today's post is a joint effort by Bohe and Leilani. They'll be telling you about all the neat stuff we did at Horn Point the other day. Enjoy!
"At camp this morning we had it very rush-free, because today we didn't have to go on the boat. We woke up later than usual, because we had no tents to take down or sleeping bags to be rolled up. This morning we had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. Then we left to go to the oyster lab.
Oysters! Woo hoo! Two days ago, we traveled to Horn Point on the Chesapeake Bay. We visited the Horn Point oyster research lab and helped the manager, Stephanie Alexander. The staff allowed us to watch the oysters while they were spawning and gave us tours of the lab. Then they made us work. First, we made shell bags. This task consisted of: pulling apart 50 little black plastic nets, filling them with empty oyster shells, and twisting these bags to throw them onto a crate. In order to make this chore somewhat fun, the LCF staff, along with Stephanie, turned the whole event into a race between the two watches, the Titans and Pokemon. Titans won, but everybody had fun.
When we came back we had grilled cheese for lunch and went back to the afternoon shift.
After lunch, the whole group trudged up to the lab again and we scrubbed. We scrubbed oysters and we scrubbed a filthy, muddy, stinking tub of oyster droppings. We ended the day by watching the fruits of our labor. Our shell bags became the homes of the new larvae on its way to becoming spat, or oysters that have permanently attached themselves to something. The CTY shell bags, created with sweat and breaking backs, gave these little helpless oysters a chance to live.
We came back after the second shift at the lab dirty, hot, and exhausted. We went to the nearest point of sand on the water and went for a long afternoon swim. We came back to camp and played some games, including wiffle ball and a fun game of Mafia. We had a dinner of chili stew. After dinner James rounded us up and we had a conversation about our highs and lows of the day. After discussing our highs and lows we were introduced to the final project that ties everything together. We are going to have to do a skit in groups. The choices are 18th century oyster dredging, 19th century dredging and present-day dredging along with things that endanger oysters. We have to explain about how oyster dredging affects the bay and how it has progressed over time. We had a great day today and look forward to another tomorrow."
- Leilani and Bohe
Thank you for reading, and thanks to Bohe and Leilani for a great post. Over and out! Tune in again to hear about our trip to St. Michael's!
-Jordan
"At camp this morning we had it very rush-free, because today we didn't have to go on the boat. We woke up later than usual, because we had no tents to take down or sleeping bags to be rolled up. This morning we had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. Then we left to go to the oyster lab.
Oysters! Woo hoo! Two days ago, we traveled to Horn Point on the Chesapeake Bay. We visited the Horn Point oyster research lab and helped the manager, Stephanie Alexander. The staff allowed us to watch the oysters while they were spawning and gave us tours of the lab. Then they made us work. First, we made shell bags. This task consisted of: pulling apart 50 little black plastic nets, filling them with empty oyster shells, and twisting these bags to throw them onto a crate. In order to make this chore somewhat fun, the LCF staff, along with Stephanie, turned the whole event into a race between the two watches, the Titans and Pokemon. Titans won, but everybody had fun.
When we came back we had grilled cheese for lunch and went back to the afternoon shift.
After lunch, the whole group trudged up to the lab again and we scrubbed. We scrubbed oysters and we scrubbed a filthy, muddy, stinking tub of oyster droppings. We ended the day by watching the fruits of our labor. Our shell bags became the homes of the new larvae on its way to becoming spat, or oysters that have permanently attached themselves to something. The CTY shell bags, created with sweat and breaking backs, gave these little helpless oysters a chance to live.
We came back after the second shift at the lab dirty, hot, and exhausted. We went to the nearest point of sand on the water and went for a long afternoon swim. We came back to camp and played some games, including wiffle ball and a fun game of Mafia. We had a dinner of chili stew. After dinner James rounded us up and we had a conversation about our highs and lows of the day. After discussing our highs and lows we were introduced to the final project that ties everything together. We are going to have to do a skit in groups. The choices are 18th century oyster dredging, 19th century dredging and present-day dredging along with things that endanger oysters. We have to explain about how oyster dredging affects the bay and how it has progressed over time. We had a great day today and look forward to another tomorrow."
- Leilani and Bohe
Thank you for reading, and thanks to Bohe and Leilani for a great post. Over and out! Tune in again to hear about our trip to St. Michael's!
-Jordan
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Day 2!
Today's post brought to you by Diana and Mark.
"CTY students for oysters trip 1 were split up into 2 groups.Alex, Leilani, Kimberly, Mark, Bo, and Ryan were in one group. And the rest, Diana, Tavonda, Jose, Chris, Brenton were on another team, team Pokemon. Both teams got to experience how to navigate, steer the boat at the helm, check the boat, and watch the bow. We got to rescue something when it went overboard: a water bottle."
- Diana
"Yesterday we played games. On the boat we played "2 truths and a lie" and told funny boat stories. On our campsite I learned a camp game and later we learned a game called mafia, and played freeze tag.
On the boat a water bottle fell overboard and the whole boat turned around to go and get it. I had a net and reached forward and picked it up.
When that happened it was my watch. A watch is something LCF created so that multiple students could do every task in different shifts. One watch we did boat checks and learned terms.
Another watch learned water tests like pH, phosphate, nitrate, and salinity. It was a little bit of review for me because I did bay ecology before.
So now I hope you know I'm having fun and learning new things."
- Mark
Thanks guys! Also, per request, here are some interesting things we passed yesterday while sailing from Annapolis to Horn Point:
Bloody Point - Unfortunate young lads who were forced to work on ships were sometimes murdered and dumped here by their captors when they didn't want to give a cut of the oyster dredging or fishing profit! Thus the name.
Knapp's Narrows - A narrow channel that passes by Tilghman Island, a historic place for fishing and oyster dredging and home to some of the other skipjacks besides the Sigsbee!
Poplar Island - Used to be a natural island, but it sunk/eroded away. Now they're using sludge they've dredged up from the bottom of the river to recreate it and make a new habitat for birds and other creatures! Look for it around 2020.
All right, that's all for now. We'll be back tomorrow with an update on how our day went at the oyster lab at Horn's Point!
Cheers,
your humble RA
"CTY students for oysters trip 1 were split up into 2 groups.Alex, Leilani, Kimberly, Mark, Bo, and Ryan were in one group. And the rest, Diana, Tavonda, Jose, Chris, Brenton were on another team, team Pokemon. Both teams got to experience how to navigate, steer the boat at the helm, check the boat, and watch the bow. We got to rescue something when it went overboard: a water bottle."
- Diana
"Yesterday we played games. On the boat we played "2 truths and a lie" and told funny boat stories. On our campsite I learned a camp game and later we learned a game called mafia, and played freeze tag.
On the boat a water bottle fell overboard and the whole boat turned around to go and get it. I had a net and reached forward and picked it up.
When that happened it was my watch. A watch is something LCF created so that multiple students could do every task in different shifts. One watch we did boat checks and learned terms.
Another watch learned water tests like pH, phosphate, nitrate, and salinity. It was a little bit of review for me because I did bay ecology before.
So now I hope you know I'm having fun and learning new things."
- Mark
Thanks guys! Also, per request, here are some interesting things we passed yesterday while sailing from Annapolis to Horn Point:
Bloody Point - Unfortunate young lads who were forced to work on ships were sometimes murdered and dumped here by their captors when they didn't want to give a cut of the oyster dredging or fishing profit! Thus the name.
Knapp's Narrows - A narrow channel that passes by Tilghman Island, a historic place for fishing and oyster dredging and home to some of the other skipjacks besides the Sigsbee!
Poplar Island - Used to be a natural island, but it sunk/eroded away. Now they're using sludge they've dredged up from the bottom of the river to recreate it and make a new habitat for birds and other creatures! Look for it around 2020.
All right, that's all for now. We'll be back tomorrow with an update on how our day went at the oyster lab at Horn's Point!
Cheers,
your humble RA
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
First Day Aboard
Ahoy there!
Our Oysters trip is well underway, after a successful first day sailing on the Sigsbee and an exciting night of camping under the stars. We set sail from the Baltimore Harbor and made our way to Annapolis, where we docked up and then went out to beautiful Thomas Point to set up our tents.
The students got to get a firsthand look (and feel) at the wonderous oyster, inside and out. There was poking, squishing, prodding, sketching, and, yes, there were some oyster guts flung on the deck (accident? maybe).
They also started with learning the "ropes" of sailing the Sigsbee, and everyone pitched in, helped out, and learned tons. We'll update tonight or tomorrow morning with content from the students, and their spin on how things are going out here! So, we're happy to tell you that everyone's safe and having fun. 'Til then,
Oysters Trip '08!
Our Oysters trip is well underway, after a successful first day sailing on the Sigsbee and an exciting night of camping under the stars. We set sail from the Baltimore Harbor and made our way to Annapolis, where we docked up and then went out to beautiful Thomas Point to set up our tents.
The students got to get a firsthand look (and feel) at the wonderous oyster, inside and out. There was poking, squishing, prodding, sketching, and, yes, there were some oyster guts flung on the deck (accident? maybe).
They also started with learning the "ropes" of sailing the Sigsbee, and everyone pitched in, helped out, and learned tons. We'll update tonight or tomorrow morning with content from the students, and their spin on how things are going out here! So, we're happy to tell you that everyone's safe and having fun. 'Til then,
Oysters Trip '08!
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