Wild World Session 3 Day 2

After archery and running the obstacle course, we did Gratitude Circle. Then we wrote a couple scenes for our play and hiked up to the white house and had snack while learning about local animals. We talked about common wild animals and their tracks that can be seen throughout Northern Georgia. Some included wild turkey, racoon, white-tailed deer,grey squirrel, red fox, worm snake, king snake, copperhead, coral snake, water snake. We focused on snakes a lot because for our art activity we wet felted snakes with sheep's wool. Wet felting is a process of combining layers of wool with warm water and soap to create felt.

Then we learned about Rube Goldberg and some of his funny machines he drew. We also looked at examples of simple machines (lever, pulley, inclined plane, screw, wheel and axle). The explorers challenged themselves to create a "Rube Goldberg Machine" that included at least 3 simple machines and 5 steps with the end goal of getting a ping pong ball in a container. Some wanted to work on their own and others worked as a team. So they split into groups to build individual parts that we will put all together into one large machine another day. Today they took turns sharing what they built. Afterwards, we ate lunch out on the porch and hiked to the "waterfall" part of the creek to play and explore. We saw the same two little water snakes that are always in the same spot. Can you see their heads in the picture below?