After Big Buddies we read a story called Spaghetti Park. The story was about a boy who enjoys going to the park with his grandpa to play bocce ball, but the park keeps getting damaged by a group of trouble makers. There is garbage, and graffiti, and damage everywhere. In the story the boy works with his dad and their community to repair the park and make it beautiful and they even put in a real bocce ball pitch. But the trouble makers keep coming back and doing more damage. But, the boy and his dad persevere and eventually get a few of the troublemakers to change their ways and start helping in the park instead of hurting it. In the end, everyone realizes how important it is to keep the park looking great and they all start pitching in.
After we read the story Ms. Boyer and Mrs. Hamby introduced us to a new phrase. The phrase is: Leave No Trace. Mrs. Hamby and Ms. Boyer gave us a hint that the story and the phrase kind of went together and then we worked in small groups to try to figure out what that phrase might mean. We recorded our ideas on chart paper and then shared our ideas with the class. While we were sharing Ms. Boyer added our ideas to a class list on the chart paper. Here is what we came up with:
Once we understood the idea of Leave No Trace, it was time to put the idea into action. Ms. Boyer and Mrs. Hamby reminded us that forts were one of the negative human impacts we identified in the Whispering Woods but Mrs. Hamby also told us a story about how much fun she used to have building forts when she was little. We talked about how maybe we could use the idea of Leave No Trace to find a balance between having fun with forts and also reducing our negative human impacts. That lead to today's challenge. We went out to the Whispering Woods and each chose a place to play and build. Once we had chosen a spot we had one of the adults take a "before" picture. Then, we got to build and play. We were allowed to build anything we wanted using the materials that we could find in the woods. Once we were finished building we asked an adult to take a "during" picture. Finally, we had to take our building apart and try to Leave No Trace. Once we thought we had put everything back where we found it, we had an adult take an "after" picture. Take a look at some of our pictures, how do you think we did?
