Fourth-graders given hands-on experience in wilderness ways
Thursday, November 2, 2006
By GALE CADY WILLIAMS
ThisWeek Staff Writer
Fourth-graders had the opportunity to learn different Native American games and skills Oct. 25. Here Colton Corley (left) and Joey Mazzi try to start a fire with help from eighth-grade teacher Sandy Wilmore.
What might be more fun to learn if you were nine years old:
How to make a fire?
How to sleep warmly in the woods with no tent?
How to walk silently through the forest?
While all fourth-grade students across the state study Ohio's Native American heritage as part of the state's mandated curriculum, 45 students in the classrooms of team-teachers Melissa Mackey and Tim Bush at New Albany's 2-5 building got a hands-on experience that brought their textbook lessons to life.
First, students trekked to the edge of Swickard Woods and fortified themselves against the brisk autumn weather with foods that Ohio's Native Americans would have eaten.
Assembled on large drop cloths on the open field near the woods, students enjoyed a menu that included corn bread, roasted deer meat, corn, sunflower seeds, roasted pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pie.
Bush, the social studies/science half of the team who planned the day, said he wanted to try something new for this year's month-long unit of study on Native Americans, and the three-hour outdoor powwow was the result.
He invited parent volunteers to contribute native Ohio food for the feast and planned four learning stations. Two women skilled in the ways of the woods, Jennifer Biesecker and Sandra Wilmore, also took part as instructors.
In the woods, using nothing but the sticks and leaves in their surroundings, Biesecker taught students how to build a wilderness version of a sleeping bag called a "debris hut." The lean-to construction resembled a pod-shaped nest on the ground.
After locating a tree with a forked trunk, Biesecker led students in finding a sturdy stick to serve as a ridge pole as they propped one end in the fork, then layered the sides with "sticks with hands" to form the ribs.
After the ribs were laid, she told the group to cover the ribs with a thick layer of leaves. When it was finished, the cocoon was nearly invisible on the forest floor, and a willing student volunteer wiggled inside, invisible but for his head.
"You can pull more leaves around you to cover your face and head; plenty of air will get through," Biesecker said. "Your body heat will keep you warm.
"You want three feet of leaves on top of you," she said. "That will keep you warm down to 30 degrees. You'll need another foot of leaves for every 10 degrees colder it is."
Part Native American, Biesecker said later that since her father had taught her how to make a debris hut, she had not been afraid of exploring or being lost in the woods.
A New Albany eighth-grade science teacher, Wilmore demonstrated different ways to make fire using flint and steel and wood-on-wood friction.
She even used a game of tug-of-war. Wilmore wrapped a 30-foot rope around a four-foot wooden post and held it steady, perpendicular to a wooden board with a small hollow in it. Students lined up on opposite sides along the rope and pulled back and forth. As they pulled faster and harder, small puffs of smoke began to seep from the wooden base as the smell of smoking wood wafted in the air.
This method produced shouts of victory from the 9-year-olds and smoke on the wooden base below in just moments.
For the flint and steel method, Wilmore brought out lengths of jute, a tin of charred cotton squares, a large metal cookpot, a flint with a V etched in the side and a U-shaped steel striker. After showing students how to separate and pull the jute into a ball of fluffy tinder, she demonstrated how to earn a spark from striking flint on steel.
"Don't bunt. Hit for a home run. Form is everything," Wilmore said. As she took a full roundhouse swing, sliding the striker full-force down the V in the flint, sparks flew.
Catching a spark on the blackened cloth, she carried the glowing cloth to the fluff and put the ember on the fluff, held the fluff between her cupped hands and began to blow carefully. Within seconds, the fluff erupted into fire and she dropped the flaming fuzz into the cookpot.
"I liked the games and I liked making fire," said Akshaya Raviraj, 9. "We got to make sparks, and I've never really made real fire. We took flint and steel and rubbed it and sparks came. We had to blow in it and then fire came, and we put it into a pot and we watched the fire."
Bush taught students to walk like a Native American hunter.
"A deer has 10 times better hearing than you do," Bush said. 'We made all that noise coming out here, stomping around and breaking twigs, but would we get meat for dinner tonight? No, we'd get berries," Bush said. "If I hear a sound, you're losing us our dinner."
"I really liked the station with Mr. Bush," said Julia Rothstein, 9. "What we did in it was fox walk. Instead of walking heel to toe, you walk toe-to-heel but forward. You don't make as much noise that way. And I learned that if you cup your ears you can hear better, and if you face the right way, you can hear better.
As students headed back inside at 2 p.m., Ilana Vogel, 9, was full of enthusiasm for the whole experience.
"You have to have really good hearing to hear stuff around you in the woods," she said excitedly. "We learned how to build your own shelter and how to build a fire. I learned you have to know the right wood for the fire and the right leaves for the shelter. I learned that you have to make your own bow and arrow to get meat."
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