[playful music]
- Good.
Squeeze again.
I taught PE and biology and health.
Now you know how hard it is for the spider to make her web,
don't you?
I decided that I didn't want to be inside any longer.
I like being outside.
And I think this is the perfect fit for me.
I'm hoping that the kids have as much fun as I have.
♪ The spider in the web... ♪
It's not what we know, it's how we think about nature.
- KIDS: ♪ The spider in the web. ♪
- ProjectWILD provides the curriculum for that.
Growing Up WILD provides the curriculum for that.
I use it almost every day.
- KIKI CORRY: ProjectWILD is professional development for
educators to help them teach about wildlife
and wildlife issues.
On any given Saturday, somebody in Texas is probably getting
trained in ProjectWILD.
- I'm trying to wake you up.
Heads up!
Where's your thumb?
- TEACHER: Water!
- SUSAN: Yay!
And there are hundreds of facilitators who are certified
to conduct those trainings pretty much anywhere.
Is there more water than land?
- TEACHERS: Yes.
- In the workshop they get a book and the teachers
learn how to teach the children.
- We chose activities that deal with
the same concept but at different grade levels.
And these activities not only were written by educators
but piloted by educators before they are given out in workshops.
- It's just not all science.
You can also teach literacy, you can teach mathematics,
you can teach social studies.
What you're going to do is teach this to the rest of us
and have us participate like we're the students.
I've done every single one of these with the kids
in this book.
- KIKI: The ProjectWILD activities are experience-based.
Regardless of the level of your students, everyone in the class
will have shared the same experience with the content
and then the teacher has something to work from.
- INSTRUCTOR: One.
Two.
Three.
- TEACHERS: ♪ The bear went over the mountain. ♪
♪ The bear went over the mountain. ♪
♪ He ate the fish on the mountain, ♪
♪ as much as he could eat. ♪
[applause]
- KIKI: When you attend a Texas Parks and Wildlife ProjectWILD
workshop, you receive it from a facilitator who is local to
your area and resources that are pertinent to that area.
- It's the really tiny things that you end up finding the
most interest and the most detail.
You get real lucky and you might find a snake.
- KIKI: They know what the issues in their area are,
and they're going to make the workshop most relevant
for their audience at their sites.
- Our old friend Mountain Cedar.
It's the male that puffs out that yellow pollen that's giving
you those allergy problems.
This program helps people overcome some maybe
preconceived notions of icky bugs and things like that.
Check it out watch.
- TEACHERS: Oh, ew.
Ooh!
- That red is used as a dye still to this day.
There's a lot of visual activity.
So this appeals to so many different children
and the way they learn.
Having lessons that are using the outdoors to teach,
it can't be beat.
The goal or the struggle or the challenge as a prey is to get
over to the end, grab some food, get back to shelter,
and not get eaten by the predator.
We're playing about a five-minute round.
You should only take one token of food at a time.
- KIKI: The thing that makes ProjectWILD workshop different
is that you actually do the activity as if you were a kid.
They demonstrate with the participants how to do
the activities.
- Thirty seconds!
- KIKI: And discuss from a teacher's perspective how you
would use them and what the advantages and disadvantages of
some of the strategies are and that sort of thing.
- TIMOTHY: So this ProjectWILD raining today was designed to
educate educators.
This all-day shop gave them some ideas and some tools to pass
these nature based messages on to their students.
- Class, class, class.
Thank you for getting quiet.
We are going to be talking about and doing a game about
predators and prey.
"In The Thicket" is a great lesson to teach predator-prey
relationship.
Raise your hand and remind me, what is a predator?
As well as how animals adapt to their surroundings to deal with
predator-prey situations,
and that's fun because it's very active.
And they get to be the predator and prey and they get to
experience it.
Come here predator.
I'm going to take her all the way over here.
She is going to turn around and she's going to look for
all her prey.
If she sees you and she calls your name you have to
come with her.
You're going to be a predator too.
They will hide in our garden space, but still have to have
their eye on the predator.
And go!
One... two... three...
We'll discuss why you want to have your eye on the predator,
just so they can see how close can you get to the predator
without being noticed because you've adapted
to the environment.
18... 19... 20.
Now who can you see?
Call out their names.
- STUDENT: Tommy!
I saw you!
Donna!
- REBECCA: Usually I have one idea I want them to
take away from it.
You know, big idea.
But the other thing I want them to understand from it is
learning doesn't happen in the classroom.
Learning happens everywhere.
Every space they're in, every experience they're having is
a learning experience.
- STUDENT: Max!
I saw you!
- REBECCA: Come on up, Max.
And then we'll deconstruct it and figure out what worked
and get their opinions.
What was the easiest thing for you to spot somebody?
- KIKI: I mean, what we want to do is help children grow up into
adults who can thing about the wildlife and their habitats.
It would be nice if some of them grew up to be wildlife
biologists, but really we would just like everyday people to
just kind of get it.
[music]