Daniel Benitez Blog Post 4

Good Afternoon,

This week was pretty interesting. It was Marine Biology week. I think I mentioned it in the last post but I'll just say it again. Every week at the Frost Museum's summer camp they do differently themed activities with new kids as well. This week's theme was Marine Biology.

The museum is also an aquarium, so as you can imagine that was our first stop. We visited the top half of the aquarium on Monday and the other sections that reside underneath it on Tuesday. Here is a picture of the campers and staff looking up at the pool where we have stingrays, sharks and other types of fish living together. Fish sadly not pictured.

This week the campers got to do a lot of cool activities. I was with the 2nd graders again this week and they started the week fish printing. Fish printing is when you paint on a "jello" like mold of a fish then with copy paper print that mold onto the paper. I think the pictures below will explain the concept better. 

 

This ends up being the result: 

Another cool activity the campers had to do was a squid dissection. Out of all the activities I've done so far this one surprised me the most because elementary school kids especially not 2nd graders don't normally perform dissections. I performed by first dissection in 8th grade and even then the teacher was extremely hesitant. These campers however surprised me. I thought that they were going to be like "ewwww" and "thats so gross" and like just start cutting the squid and just poking it and not truly grasping the educational benefits of the activity. They did the exact opposite. They were following the directions precisely and finding all the different organs and all in all it was really awesome seeing the excitement in their eyes when they cut open the mantle of the squid to see what lay underneath it. 

Everytime an activity is going to take place, I find myself distributing the materials to the campers and everytime i think to myself, already knowing the end goal of the activity, "how will they do this? I barely know how to start. How do they even begin?" That was the case when the campers were tasked to make the objects that they were given float (half on the top of the water, half underwater). I didn't know how to even go about it but without hesitation they got to thinking and quickly had to "boats" ready to test their floating abilities. Kids are truly remarkable. 

Interning with young students has made me appreciate how hard the YAP Alumni had to work during Washington Week. As I was helping the campers with their questions and their activities, I found myself looking back and realizing that the alumni did a lot of this during Washington Week. I just want to say Thank You! 

Till next time, 

Daniel