When I first saw Covenant Harbor, I was excited and amazed because they had a very huge lake! Just by looking at Covenant Harbor, it made the back of my hair rise! Once all the sixth graders and teachers were done talking, we had to split into groups for our Outdoor Education activities. Our activities were Team Building, Entomology, Survival, Nature, Archery, Orienteering, New Games, and High Ropes. I had group number two and each group had a different first period in the morning. We all had breakfest in the morning, then we had lunch, and finally, we had dinner.
At the beginning of Outdoor Education, everyone in the sixth grade had to meet up at a hill for an activity. For our activity, each group had to do Team Building. That is where you help your group fight through the challenges together. Our first team building activity was that we had to hold hands and cross through multiple of strings. That may sound easy, but we couldn’t touch the string at all! Whoever touches any of the strings, gets blindfolded. Eventually we all passed and it was time for the next challenge course. Our group had to pick up a stick with only using the front side of our index finger. We all had to pretend it was a bomb and that we had to put it to safety by balancing the stick with our finger. If one person pushes their finger upward, then the rest of the people that were holding it, lose balance. After all of our team building activities, it was dinnertime. After dinner, we go to our cabins and we sleep until the morning comes. Once morning arrives, its time for our first lesson of Entomology (Insects)!
Going to our first lesson of the day, my group and I go to Entomology. Entomology is where you learn about insects and how they live in their environment. The Entomology teacher put random insects on each of our backs. She did this because we are going to go to others and guess what our insect is on our back. After we were finished finding our type of insect, we talked about each person’s insect and what it does. After that, we had to make our “own” insect that is made out of candy. I made mine look similar to an ant and others made theirs great as well!
Survival was a very fun and interesting class. We stood by a fire that filled my body with heat! Our group sat in a circle and we talked about how to survive and three things to survive in the woods. After we shared our opinions, our challenge was to make a shelter. We needed to make a shelter because if we were in the woods and we need shelter, we could make it from wood. We were allowed to pick 3 or 4 people to build the shelter with you.
Cleaning up and going to the next class, Nature time! Nature is all about outdoors. In nature class, we have to use our 5 senses: Touch, Smell, See, Taste, and Hear. We need to use all of those senses because there’s a challenge where you pick a partner and you blindfold them. Once you have blindfolded them you guide them to a tree and the person that is blind has to use their 5 senses to find what tree is which.
Later in the afternoon, it was time for my favorite class- Archery! I’ve been waiting to do Archery for a while! Archery is where you test your accuracy with bone arrows. You have to shoot at a picture of an animal and you have to hit a part of the animal. If you hit the animal, you have great accuracy. If you don’t, try again! There’s a contest where you have to pop a balloon with one bullet and if you get it, your team gets 25 points for that shot.
After Archery, our group went to Orienteering! I learned about compasses and how they work in orienteering! You had to change the dial at a certain degree and make the red arrow point north. You put a coin from where you are standing because you have to walk away from it. Once you have pointed the red arrow to north, you start walking a few steps away from your coin. Then you change the dial to whatever your teacher says to change it to and then you start walking a few more steps. Then you take huge steps and try to get back to your coin by using the compass. After we had finished practicing with our compass, you had to pick a partner to go with you in the woods. When you go in the woods, you have to use your compass and dial the degree to whatever your paper says, and take whatever steps the paper says. Each amount of steps will get you to a letter and you have to find all of the letters before time runs out!
After our journey, it was gym time! New Games is multiple of games you can play with your group. In New Games, we played games such as Frisbee, Ultra Nerf, and Elbow Tag. Frisbee is when you pass a disco shaped ball to your teammate back and forth until you reach a maximum of 5 catches. There’s a defense side where they have to block your Frisbee throw when you try to pass it to your teammate. In the end, we all switch sides and we have fun in the New Games!
After lunch, after lunch it was the scariest activity for me. It was High Ropes. High Ropes is where you have to climb obstacles way up high and sometimes you have to do tricks. This was the scariest for me because I am afraid of heights! Whenever I climb high and I look down, I feel like I would let go and fall! Some of my friends said High Ropes was a piece of cake but some others were afraid like me. Since I wasn’t the only one afraid of heights, I made a deal with my friends that if I climb the obstacles, they would climb it as well
All in all, it was time to pack up. Covenant Harbor became quiet again and all the kids were sad because we were leaving! But we all had fun and we all enjoyed the trip to Outdoor Education!
