Mansfield Science Camp begins fundraising

by Adrienne Douke

The Mansfield metformin hcl 500 mg price School Science Camp fundraising efforts are in full swing. Every other year, the fifth and sixth grade students go on a four-day field trip to the coast at the end of May, to whale watch and learn about ocean life forms. This article is what the Science Camp is about, and how the staff and students raise the funding to go every year.

The Science Camp got its start over 20 years ago as a grant-funded excursion to Lost Lake in Okanogan County. The Mansfield School District was invited by the Waterville School District to share a grant for four or five days at the lake. The field trip included camping in the bunk houses, crafts, and lessons about survival and hiking.

Although the curriculum changed yearly, Diana Mickelson (Mansfield fifth and sixth grade teacher) remembers the kids studying leeches, identifying different species of trees and birds, looking for animal tracks and ‘scat’ and — when the sky was clear — looking at the stars and identifying the different constellations.

One year, the classes went to Republic and looked for fossils. Every other year, classes go to the old copper mining town on Lake Chelan, known as Holden Village. This area is in a forest, and the village has a museum, cabins, bunkhouses, a cafeteria, an old fashioned ice cream parlour and a bowling alley where the pins have to be set up by hand. The kids love it! When the grant ended five years later, Mansfield School was on their own to find funding for the Science Camp.

In the past few years, the Science Camp has branched out and traveled to the coast on the non-Holden years, to whale watch and give the kids a chance to have an ocean experience. Since the fifth and sixth grade classes stay together for two years, the camp goes to varied destinations. One year they went to a camp on the peninsula, another time they went to Orcas Island, and two years ago they went to Camp Orkila, another camp on Orcas Island. They liked it well enough to go there again this year.

Camp Orkila offers an ocean beach for exploration and marine experts who can show and explain ocean life forms. The camp also offers a salmon spawning creek that is easy for kids to see.

Since the school liked the program so well, the staff and students decided to find a way to raise funds for continued Science Camp field trips. The Booster Club provides the main support for the Science Camp, and the Science Camp does a lot of fundraising through their concession events.

Diana Mickelson also used her ingenuity and resourcefulness by making use of a chocolate making hobby, and became the head chocolatier, teaching the kids how to make chocolate bars. The fifth and sixth graders and their parents sell them at basketball games, other school functions and around the neighborhood. This effort has proved highly successful as a fundraising activity, and has developed a loyal following locally.

The fifth and sixth graders also hold bake sales and the kids help out the Garden Club at the local Blue Stem Park in Mansfield, for which the Garden Club reciprocates by giving donations for the Science Camp. Working in the park has yielded other benefits for the kids. They learn about the park itself and its ecosystem, and also develops a sense of pride and ownership, which results in a decrease in park vandalism, since the kids know how much work it takes to maintain it.

Science Camp has become a Mansfield School tradition and a ‘rite of passage’ for the fifth and sixth graders as a really fun field trip, full of exciting learning experiences that also promotes a well-rounded education.

Additionally, since the kids are part of the fund-raising effort, they also learn the value of hard work and the rewards that come from it. When they move on to other grades, they take with them the valuable experience of whale watching, fossil finding, chocolate making and candy bar sales, as well as a deeper understanding of marine life, garnered from their field trips to the ocean beaches.