With our prior knowledge of the Pine Barrens, today, we took a guided hike with John Volpa, the education director of Pinelands Adventures. Throughout the five mile hike, he described the ten necessities of hiking, went in depth about the ecological and historical background of the Pine Barrens, justified the name behind the “Pineys,”...
Continue readingBayshore Intensive Learning First Impressions
Bayshore Adventure Begins! Today we toured the Delaware Bay Museum, hiked through the marshes, and climbed up and down the boat. Read on for more details. Smells Ring Bells Bayshore attendees all agreed that the most memorable things about our first MFS Intensive Learning day were the smells. Upon exiting the bus, we were...
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Exploring Art: Putting the final touches on our projects
Today we stayed on campus to complete all of our projects both individual and group — photography, sculpture, mandalas and totems abound! It was a great way to end our week of exploration and creation. The photos say it all …...
Continue readingWhat Does it Take to Keep a Tall Ship Up and Running?
It started raining and thundering today, keeping us from applying the final coats of Penetrol to the spars. We were able to move some smaller pieces of the boat undercover, where some of us scraped some paint off the wood and then repainted it. Those of us outside got drenched in horizontally-falling rain water, so it...
Continue readingA Visit to the Pine Island Cranberry Co!
On the final day of our journeys through the Pine Barrens, our group visited the Pine Island Cranberry Company in Washington, NJ. Once there, we learned about the history of cranberry farming in New Jersey. We were welcomed by employees of the company, including Stefanie and Mike Haines, and learned about the beginning of...
Continue readingExploring Art: More Reflections from the Pond
We all had a great time at Pakim Pond on Wednesday and wanted to share a few more pics....
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Exploring Art: Art on the Pond
A beautiful day for an adventure outside of the classroom! Getting an early start to our day, we traveled to Pakim Pond, in the Brendan T. Byrne State Forest (formerly Lebanon State Forest) for a day of hiking, exploring and as usual — creating. It was refreshing to travel less than 30 miles from...
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Exploring Art: Art in the Cove
The second half of our day was getting out of the classroom and taking an adventure in Palmyra Cove Nature Park. It was a bit chilly, but the sun and water made it a great departure from the classroom. We found all sorts of beauty in the nature from the rocks, roots, branches and...
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First Day at Bivalve
We had a busy day! We went to the Port Norris Wawa to grab lunch, then headed to the Bayshore Center at Bivalve. After a tour of the museum, we went on a walk through the wetlands with Captain Jesse. Then we learned more about the projects we’ll be doing this week, including sanding...
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First Bayshore meeting!
It was great to finally get a chance to see our group together. Fun facts: 50% of us chose blue as our favorite color, and the most popular favorite food was ice cream (5 out of 16 votes). After introductions, we watched a slide show to learn a bit more about the Bayshore Center...
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A Prelude to the Pines
Welcome to the Pine Barrens 2016 IL Blog! We met as a group today to discuss our week’s activities, which will include: guided hikes through the Pines with resident ecology experts, a visit to a cranberry bog, a visit to a wildlife refuge, and so much more! We asked our group what they would...
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An Educational Day
Today we stayed on campus to present what we learned throughout the week to the fourth grade classes here at MFS. Since they will be going to Camp Ockanickon in April, we wanted to give them an idea of what their experience would be like. In the process, we also gave the fourth graders a...
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Pine Barrens Wildlife
Today was the fourth day of the Pine Barrens Intensive Learning program. This morning, after a short bus ride, we arrived at Woodford Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge, where we were greeted by Erin, our guide. She led us on a trail through the Pine Barrens and pointed out some of the interesting plants along...
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Bogs, Berries and Jersey Devils
To start off our day we visited the Pine Island Cranberry Co.. We learned a lot about the art of growing and harvesting cranberries. Mr. Haines and his son, daughter, and Christina gave us a lovely tour of the property. We learned about the selective breeding of cranberries, the fungi that can infect them and how...
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Lake Newton Clean-Up
Today our group took a trip to Newton Lake in Collingswood. We went around the entire lake with large plastic bags and picked up garbage. We also learned about macroinvertebrates which are small bugs. We learned that there are three different kinds of macroinvertebrates, and they are type 1, type 2, and type 3....
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