Rescuing The Wildlife Camp: Day 1

Hi guys :)

Today I'm going to write about the first day of the camp dedicated to learning how to rescue the wildlife. This camp was not held in Aowanda, we moved off the mountain to the Endemic Species Research Institute. 32 kids from elementary schools all over Taiwan participated. All of us assembled in Taichung Train Station on Wednesday morning and every child was immediately assigned to a team (we had total of 4 teams). I was in Yellow Group, led by Maggie. When we got to the Endemic Species Research Institute, we went straight to the classroom.

First thing children did was making their name cards and filling out questionnaires that were supposed to test their knowledge of rescuing wild animals. Most of the name cards were really cool. I was a little bit surprised how popular Angry Birds are:).

Filling out questionnaires

Working on the name cards:)

Yellow group, led by Maggie

Blue group, led by Snail

Red group, led by Spider

Green group, led by Wei, who is not in the picture

After lunch we did "Ice-breaking" and played introductory games, both of those activities were designed to help us get to know each other, build team spirit and get children to be comfortable working together. Both of those activities were used in the first camp too. I actually broke our ice before the game even started (I didn't account for my hands melting a little bit of eyes and let it fall out) at first, but thankfully teachers had one cup as reserve.

Ice breaking game

Right about this time I began to notice that mosquitoes are going to be a big problem during this camp and started using obscene amounts of repellent. Then we played "The Pyramid", a game designed to show how fragile ecological system is and teach children about the food chain, all that while emphasising importance of teamwork. The game was very well designed.

We also walked the trail in the area and kids learned how to use binoculars. The game was called "Animals, where are you?". Two teachers went far away from children and were putting up signs with drawn animals. Kids were supposed to recognize as many animals as they could.

After dinner children listened to a lecture about birds, learning about their typical features (sounds, colors etc.). That was it for the first day. I personally can't wait for the rest of the camp!

See you guys soon,

Sam