This year at my school we decided to have our first annual Mosaic Day. Mosaic Day is when the teachers get to teach about their hobbies instead of their regular classes. The students get to pick a teacher that they want to hang out with for the day and they learn about that hobby. It is a great way to show the kids that we teachers do have lives outside of school. It is also a lot of fun too. Kids got to choose between cooking classes, aerobics, weight training, card games, dog training, hip hop dancing, and so many other fun activities. The hardest thing for me to do was to decide what type of class I was going to teach. I love nature and being outside, but my school is in the city and it would take too long to go somewhere. Then I thought of my survival training in Alaska. How fun would it be to put kids through a day of survival training? When the students walked into the classroom, they all received fake Alaska Airline tickets to Fairbanks and they had to find their seats in the classroom. On the 'flight' they got snacks and were relaxed until 'dum, dum, dum' the plane crashed. There were injuries in the crash, so they had to learn how to help the injured with what limited supplies they had.
Kris is attempting to stop the bleeding of Dakota?
Dakota might not be able to see, but at least his head is not bleeding.
Once all of the injuries were taken care of the survivors had to prioritize what to do next. What would they need to do to survive? The plane crashed in the snowy mountains so the kids decided that fire and shelter were two very important things to have. We went over shelter building in snowy areas, but unfortunately all of our snow had already melted and we couldn't practice. We could, however, practice how to make fires.
Three different groups are attempting to make fires with varying amounts of supplies.
One team succeeding in making fire and the rest of the groups soon had fire as well.
It seemed like everything was going to be okay. Our survivors had treated their injuries, made shelters, and made fire. However, I couldn't let them get off that easy. So it rained. How could they keep dry with only trash bags? Most people don't know that there is definitely a right and a wrong way to make a poncho out of a trash bag. If you just poke a hole in the top for your head, the water will run down your neck and you won't stay dry. Our survivors had to learn the 'correct' way.
Natasha gets two thumbs up for making a poncho that will keep her dry.
After a long day of learning to survive, the last step was to learn how to signal for help. The survivors learned different methods for signaling for help and fortunately their story had a happy ending. All the students on the plane were miraculously saved. Everyone had a great time learning how to survive and I can't wait until next year's Mosaic Day to do it all over again.