Herons: Week 4 - Rain and Fire!
Tarp Shelters
We had our first rainy day at Nature Connect! It wasn't too cold, but having a fire felt nice! Our first priorities were getting the tarps set up and collecting wood for fire. It wasn't raining too hard when we first arrived, so we wanted to get camp set up before it started raining too hard. We also noticed that the shelters that were still set up from previous weeks were (a little) drier than the surround area. Could we make a shelter that could keep out the rain?
Friction Fire
While we had a break in the rain, we collected firewood and talked about the different sizes of wood needed to start a fire. We set up our kindling in the fire pan. Then Ms. Kathryn made something she called a "tinder bundle". Someone asked if we had matches and instead, Ms. Kathryn pulled out a bow-drill kit! It took a couple (about a dozen) tries, but we were successful in getting a coal from the bow drill, despite the wet conditions. Before we knew it there was a merry, warm blaze going in the fire pan. We had to dry out some of the wood before putting it on, but we were able to keep the fire going all day!
Natural Pigments
Working with Nature Pigments was a little tricky today, a few of us were able to decorate our covers, but we are going to revisit this exciting project another week. We still enjoyed exploring the different pigment options while Ms. Britt explained the process.
Wander
After lunch we went on a rainy forest wander! We explored some different areas of the woods. The forest sounds so different when it is rainy! It was also really interesting to see what animals had been through the sandy trails in the past couple of hours. We talked about how to tell when an animal left a track using the rain drops as an indicator. As we spread out into two groups on our wander, the lead group left signs at each trail intersection to let the following group know which way to go. We never got lost! It was a fun, rainy day!
