Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
For a group of Foster Elementary School students, last week was all about survival.
Staying alive was the name of the game as Foster held its ninth annual Outdoor School, this year at Camp Tadmore, above McDowell Creek Park.
Foster’s Outdoor School, Principal Vic Zgorzelski said, “takes the classroom away from the building and out into the environment.”
He said each year’s event has a different theme and this year’s was “survival.”
High school student-counselors wore T-shirts similar to the TV show “Survivor” and the children were divided into teams called “tribes,” which competed against each other.
“The kids learned, on a small scale, how to survive in the wilderness,” Zgorzelski said.
He said the camp is also an opportunity for children to experience something outside their normal routine.
“For a lot of our kids, this is an opportunity to get away from home in a situation where they are supervised around the clock, and where they can get to know each other a little better,” he said.
Teacher Angie Yon, who was one of the organizers, said 73 fifth- and sixth-graders participated in this year’s Outdoor School. The children got lessons in first aid, how to build a fire, and how to build a shelter.
Sixth-grader Brieanna Thompson, 12, said her favorite part of the Outdoor School was a fishing trip to Foster Lake.
“I caught one little one,” she said. “I’ve been fishing five times.”
R.C. Phillips, 12, a fifth-grader, said the Outdoor School was “really cool.”
“They’re teaching us some really good stuff about the forest,” he said. “The food is good. Everybody really had fun.”
Phillips said the most important thing he learned was “not to play with fire in the forest.”
Fifth-grader Karese Mancuso, 11, recited some specifics on survival.
“We learned you can survive without food for three weeks,” she said, with a little prompting from friends.
“We learned you can survive without water for three days and without air for three to five minutes.”
She said she had the most fun on the scavenger hunt, in which tribe members had to find ribbons with their team colors and find painting supplies to make team flags.
The tribes each performed a skit, made a flag, created a cheer, and participated in reward competitions that included sling-shot target shooting, mud competitions, blindfold challenges and an endurance competition in which the winning team was the one whose members were able to run and jump longer than anyone else.
The Orange tribe won, but barely beat the Navy Blue tribe, which finished one point behind.
Twenty-four high school students, who had to apply for the positions, served as counselors and helped their tribes compete.
Nichole Martin, a junior at Sweet Home High School, said the older teens were there to be role models for the youngsters.
“We spend almost all our time with the kids,” she said. “We try to be like an older brother or sister to them. Some of them don’t have that. We teach them to work together, to do activities.”
On Wednesday afternoon, the tribes engaged in mud competitions — wheelbarrow races, wrestling matches, rolls through the mud, and finally, through some trickery, the inclusion of some reluctant teachers, including Yon, in the activities, to the delight of the muddied masses.
Eric Tuneberg of the Camp Tadmore staff used a fire hose to make sure the mud was sufficient for the students’ needs.
And it appeared to be more than adequate, as one competitor exclaimed, “My pants are so weighted down with mud I can’t hold them up!”