Home Schooling Program
The Home Schooling Program is run annually at Leesylvania's Visitor Center. Each month, the students meet for two hours to learn about nature and history with the park rangers, myself included. Leading such programs required clear communication and engaging energy. The homeschooling themes vary by month, the last three months having centered around colonial times, Native Americans, and nocturnal animals.
We begin every program with a morning hike. The students are divided into two age groups, 4-7 and 8-12. We go through trails of varying difficulty and warm up with some exercises.
Each month's class culminates with a craft relevant to the theme. We taught the students how to make owl ornaments with natural elements after learning all about nocturnal animals.
For the month of October, the students were exposed to the daily life of an Algonquian Native American. We covered food, shelters and art, like the drawings etched onto deer skin pelts. For our craft, the students learned how to accurately tell a story using only pictographs.
Junior Rangers Program
The Junior Rangers Program provides young children with access to conservation projects that lead up to prospects of becoming a park ranger. This annual program's outline is designed by Leesylvania's Education Specialist, Maritza Rivas. As an intern, my responsibility was to create activities based on the outlined themes for the 2018 annual program.
For the theme of Seasonal Changes, a chromatography activity was run by Maritza Rivas and I as a trial run. This gave us the opportunity to work out the activity's details and create a thorough outline for future Junior Ranger leaders.
In an effort to encourage outdoor play, a make-your-
own-kite activity was trialed with the homeschooling group. A supply table was set up outside the Visitor Center and lead by two park rangers. It received outstanding responses from the parents and children alike.
Through research about the Algonquian's way of life, information about their musical instruments was found. With some creativity and the right supplies replicas were made and integrated in the Algonquian program.