The document describes activities at a nature center during practice weeks. Some of the activities included making a fire with one match, catching and dissecting fish from a net, making caramel over the fire, homemade bubbles, a Coke and Mentos experiment, rowing boats, tree and plant identification, making waffles and pancakes, using a massive slingshot, and a team building activity. The children enjoyed the hands-on experiences like making caramel, dissecting fish, and the Coke and Mentos explosion.

1. Practice Weeks
By: Iman DeMartino and Sally Florio

2. Making a Fire
Everyday at the nature center, the
first task is to make a fire.
It is a challenge and skill to make a
fire with one match and the
children have to try to manage
that.

3. Berry Syrup Tea

4. Making Grilled Cheese

5. Fish Dissection
Another big part of the nature
center is catching fish in their nets
Most classes that visit the center
go out into row boats and bring in
the net
After they remove all the fish from
the net they may dissect them or
cook them

6. Fish cont.
• Students removing the
fish from the net
• This particular group of
students really enjoyed
playing with and
dissecting the fish

7. Fish cont.

8. Caramel!
The children especially enjoyed
making caramel over the fire.
It was an experience for both Iman
and I as well because we had never
made it before.
The only ingredient missing in this
picture is the butter.
Recipe: 3dl sugar, 3dl cream, 4 big
spoonfuls of butter

9. Caramel Cooking Process

10. Caramel cont.

11. Homemade
Bubbles
Another activity was making
bubbles from scratch.
We made one batch with warm/hot
water and another batch with
boiling hot water in order to see
what made the better bubbles.
It was another learning experience
for both of us

12. Bubbles

13. Coke and Mentos
Experiment
The students really enjoyed this
experiment.
They had two different kinds of
coca cola, one with sugar added
and one without sugar added.
They had two different types of
mentos- mint and fruity.
The mint mentos have tiny holes
inside and this is supposed to make
the explosion faster and higher.

14. Coke and Mentos
cont.
In the picture you can see part of
the explosion with coca cola that
has sugar added and 5 mint mentos
dropped into the bottle.
We wanted to take a video but it
was too difficult to get it without
any children’s faces in it.

15. Rowing
Most of the classes with older
children participated in rowing
boats or canoeing.
Sometimes they had to bring in the
fish net or canoe around and find
the posts that Hege had put out for
them.
Team building activities are highly
emphasized at the nature center.

16. Tree and Plant
Identification

17. Making Waffles and
Pancakes

18. Massive Slingshot

19. Team Building Activity

20. Sita!