Lisbon Elementary third-grade students got to learn on the wild side this past week when the school participated in the University of Iowa’s School of the Wild program from April 28 through May 2 at Lake MacBride State Park.
This year marked the first year that Lisbon Elementary took part in the program, which Ruby Ney with School of the Wild said expanded to more rural schools five years ago. This was the first year the program was open to students in third grade.
“Which is pretty awesome, because these kids still have a lot of natural curiosity to explore things in the outdoor and do things they haven’t done before,” Ney said.
The program offers learning opportunities tailored to the state park where the School of the Wild is held each day.
Lisbon students got a chance to learn about fishing, paddle canoes, learn about prairies, learn about grasslands, and learn some outdoor survival skills. Each day, students rotated to the different stations and worked with new teachers. The groups were also intermingled from other classrooms, giving students opportunities to spend time with classmates they may not get to every day.
Ney was instructing students on canoe safety before the 14 students in her section got the chance to take to paddle around Lake Macbride. On May 1, there was a sizable amount of wind, which added difficulty experienced out on the water for some groups.
The number one rule for all those in the canoe: “Do not stand up unexpectedly, out of fear that you might tip over the canoe.”
Each student was fitted properly with a life jacket and given a paddle for the canoe, as well as shown the proper way to paddle when in a canoe to get the most power.
Ney was concerned about one group, but they eventually started getting into the rhythm needed to paddle the canoe towards the spillway and coves and see items on the lake if they wanted to.
“That’s part of the experience,” Ney said.
Ney said she has loved how this program gets kids experience in the wilderness and doing different activities they may not get a chance to experience elsewhere.
A parent who was along Wednesday said that the permission slip was thorough on the dangers that students might experience at different units, but that was what made him excited for his daughter and classmates to get these experiences together.
At Lisbon teacher Kelly Robertson’s stations, it might have looked relaxing, with students getting hammocks set up in the trees or taking part in scavenger hunts for nature clues in the morning, but Sam and Andrew made their own personal challenge to set their hammock higher than other students in the third-grade class.
Adding to their challenges was they were using ropes for their hammock, which required utilizing knots that would work to get the tautness of their hammock to the desired consistency.
As part of the Scavenger Hunt, students also had to take part in orienteering skills and directions to find the different clues that were hidden around the park.
In the afternoon, students at Robertson’s class would learn how to set up tents and how to start fires using flint and steel.
As the wind picked up, Robertson noted that they did have fail safes in case it was more difficult for Flint and Steel to start fires today, with a lighter handy. However, the goal was to teach these students different survival techniques at that particular unit they could use in the future.
Over at the woodlands group led by Emily Krall-Wieseler, students explored the importance of woodlands in our state and thought about their own impact on woodland environments. That included learning to read maps, identifying wildlife and tree species, and how to calculate tree’s age using mathematical calculations.
“I enjoyed having the opportunity to deliver curriculum through immersion in the natural world,” Krall-Wieseler said. “I loved seeing every third grader highly engaged and enthusiastic about their learning as they explored and tried new experiences. It was evident that students were building empathy and respect for nature.”
Ney said that she has had many students who after paddling in a canoe mentioned wanting to go out on the lake again in the future. She recalled on Tuesday there were some who were more trepidatious, but they overcame those fears to give it a try and ended up loving that experience.
Robertson said each teacher had the opportunity to teach skills or lessons they wanted to help students learn over the course of the week.
“It’s been a lot of fun, not just for the students, but for us teachers,” Robertson said.