So few weeks to go...

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Monday, July 30, 2012 : Well I ran… cried a while and then took a shower. Since the water hurt the top part of my foot, I assumed my food had enough of my bull. Apparently, I should give it a rest. Mom’s frustrated with me, but I took all day off and RICEd it the whole time.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012: Jeff’s computer was occupied today, so we ran out of stuff half way through the day. I went to find Ashley to find something to do, but when I got back there, she was out. I did run into Matt when I went to her office. He gave me a lovely job. I got to organize the library outside his office. Sometimes I really like working alone in a quiet room. I left to tackle this beast and didn’t return until 5 til 5. The collection is quite a big larger than I thought. It has several different subjects, but I’m still going to do LOC on it.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012: Today, I went right to Matt’s library to finish it up. About an hour after I started, he let me know that Sam may need some help touring, but that we’d be trying something new. I nervously went to find everyone. Turns only Sam and one docent were there for the huge group that was coming in. I was given one of three stations. Mine was eye spy in pine uplands. Shannon had a sort of Pictionary without the pictures, and Lindsey was in the discovery zone with fossils. Sam sort of just threw out the idea of eye spy. I liked it, and hoped that I could incorporate some sort of educational tie-in at the end. I went upstairs for some inspiration before reconvening. I went upstairs, and had no idea how to pull everything together. I had no idea how to do it. I was lost. I went back downstairs, and did the only thing we can do to learn. I asked a question. Sam offered pointing out the fact that not all animals on in our back yards. Some animals need hundreds of square feet to live, so humans developing an area push the animals like bears and the Florida panthers to only specific and protected places. I loved it – So I ran with it upstairs in Pine Uplands.

Group one was intimidating. There was such a large range of ages that I didn’t think my first plan to simply eye spy an animal by its name for the first couple of spying attempts would work. So I described them by simple characteristics. The problem that came up with this group is that I spied things that were immediately next to the previous animal. They all found it within a couple seconds. That meant I had a good 2 minutes of time left before the 15 minutes was up. Throughout the whole game I kept reiterating that we had to share the environment and the relationship between the animals that I picked, so I made one last all encompassing plug that really just felt redundant, and I asked if someone wanted to spy on something. Tip: Do not “think of a number between 1 and 100 for a group of about 10 people. It’s cumbersome and confusing. Looking back, I recommend asking a question that refers back to what you’ve taught to pick who gets to be the spy-er. Since this was our first rotation, the times were off just a bit, so we had time to look at the other side, and talk about its animals. There was one girl that kept correcting people (incorrectly) and telling me how bad the museum was for killing and stuffing animals. I simply asked her to be nice and gave her some examples of how science uses that kind of discovery in anatomy and helping animals in veterinary medicine.

For the second group I tried to make the kids go back and forth, but there were snakes and squirrels that I hadn’t noticed were in multiple places. I went forth, though. Also, per a parent helper, I recommend not telling kids to run and find something. I had them all sit down when they found it; this was useful in establishing a teacher/learner relationship. This time I asked them what facts they knew and centralized their ideas to some key points. For example, the gopher tortoise, burrows like a gopher and leaves its holes behind when it is finished with them. Those left over holes are protection for other animals. The end of this group went a little more quickly, as I went over the time. For the last two minutes, I asked half of the group to find the place where a human would sleep that provided shelter (the house) and two trees that have animals in them (the trees with the secret doors revealing various animals). The latter was a bit more difficult than I anticipated, but at the end the connection between sharing an environment and supporting ecosystem growth was evident.

The third group was quite a bit rowdier. These guys must have been hungry. One girl who had some followers would sit opposite of where everyone had found the animal. When I asked them if the deer had a shell, for example, she’d say well it has four legs. The chaperone had something to say to that before I could respond. This group had a hard time paying attention, so I let them tell their stories for most of the time, and at the end of the 15 minutes, I had them sit in front of the house while I just connected the story between the animals and the people. Going downstairs to the classroom was even an obstacle. Before I do this again, I need to find out how I will address rowdiness or angry kids, as I wouldn’t have made it without the chaperones today.

After all that I went back to librarying.

Thursday, August 2, 2012: Today I kind of finished up the library before setting up kayaking with Doug for CC and Casey. They rode the bus in, and I met them at the courthouse. While they were out, I met this musician named Paul. He set the ratio of the orbits of the planets in our galaxy to different notes in music, and had them play for us. He wanted to hear it in the planetarium – It was beautiful. He was an interesting man, definitely. We left early to make it to St. Pete beach

Friday/Sat/Sun August 3, 4 & 5, 2012

Friday We went to the airport after getting ready and going to Einstein Bro Bagels… omg. So good. Note to self: their chai latte isn’t that good. We didn’t have a ride back, as we thought we would, so we had to miss work today, but Shannon and I talked about so many pirate ideas for the family night on Saturday night to help Sam out if she needed it.

Saturday Ah… three day weekend settles in. Why can’t they all be three day weekends ( I really only worked three days this week. Ah- the guilt doesn’t feel so good, but the break is a delight. We beached and ate out – It feels like summer break. Boy, am I going to miss it next year.

Sunday: I had a lovely time – got frozen yogurt, chilled out, and we grilled out, so I got a delicious portabella sammich. Yum. We got back late, so I tried to stay up in the name of Mars. Get this… I stayed up until 1: 15 – I just couldn’t handle it. I am so old.

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