Curriculum Activities For Teachers
Outdoor Education & Discovery
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Learn all about Snowshoes! Snowshoes: A Gift from Gluskabe - Exhibit at the Hudson Museum, University of Maine.
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Learn About Winter Walks from the Northwoods Photo Gallery
Garbage bag shelters, northern lights, ice, winter word pictures. Ideas to help your students learn about and enjoy winter adventure….and discover the natural winter world around them.
Learn About the Conover's Daily "Winter
Walk" Life
Each day the Winter Walk 2006 website will host a report phoned in by
the Conovers as they cross frozen lakes, rivers, and streams heading
south to Greenville. Hear their daily reports on temperature and weather,
ice thickness and snow conditions, wildlife signs and sightings, the
biggest safety or "winter living" challenge of each day, each
day's most memorable moment and even a daily "word picture."
Ask the Conover's a Question
about the Winter Walk
Go to the website's Camp
Fire link. There, you can post questions for the Conover's to answer.
Every day, the Conover's will answer questions via Satellite phone and
the answers will be posted for you to read!
Guilford Middle Schoolers learn how mukluks keep feet warm, even at -50 below
Yankee Magazine, December
2005, Mel Allen
The
Boston Globe, January 23rd, Marty Basch
Portland
Press Herald, January 23rd, Deirdre Fleming
Piscataquis
Observer, January 12th, Jessica Lee
Bangor
Daily News, January 17th, Diana Bowley
February
11th, 1981, Piscataquis Observer, Jerry Stelmok
Journal Story by Alexandra
about the original Winter Walk
February 18th, 1981,
Piscataquis Observer
November 1990, Snowcountry
Magazine, "Sometimes Life isn't Weird Enough"
GQ Magazine, Dec. 1993,
"Make Mine Mukluks"
Yankee Magazine, Sept.
1995, "Bragging Cold"
The Snowshoer, Oct/Nov
1997 "Immemorial Winter Road"
U.S. Airways Attache, Jan 2000, "Sheep's Clothing"
Boston Globe Magazine,
October 3, 2004 "Content in Canvas"
November
2nd, 2004, Bangor Daily News, Jeff Strout (The second half of the article
is about Winterwalk)
Excerpts from A Snow Walker's Companion by Garrett and Alexandra Conover Sections on Hypothermia, Wall Tent Diagrams, Snowshoes, Footwear, Menus and more!
Alexandra and Bernard Jerome of the Aroostook Band of Micmacs
Field trips help students discover winter ecology. (Here COA students work with Dr. Ressel to discover how plants survive the winter.)
Plants
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Alexandra shows students how she will tow a month's worth of food on a traditional Cree toboggan.
The Northwoods Seen From Space
These image sources were located and obtained courtesy of the Vermont
Space Education Program / Atii Sled Dogs. For more information about those educational programs contact:
Vermont Space Education Program-Space Lady Enterprises-Atii Sled Dogs
PO Box 550, Moretown, VT 05660 (802)496-3795
www.gmavt.net/~atiisleddogs
www.wildnewengland.org Great wildlife site from Maine's Dept of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife; designed just for kids! Even a monthly "moose" quiz for students to take after they've read the monthly feature. Good for reading and comprehension skills. Also has archived past issues: check out last fall's issue for a feature on how birds migrate to avoid winter!
Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Wildlife Information Page has everything from reports on moose and deer collisions to information on Maine's endangered species. Find point and click photo pages for students to learn about wildlife habitat as well as wildlife reports from all over Maine. Learn about "nuisance" wildlife as well as Maine's wildlife rehabilitator program.
Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Educational Programs have lots of help and training for teachers. Reserve a "Safari In A Box" and treat your classroom to days of discovery and wildlife learning. Check out "Project Wilds" wildlife lesson plans based on Maine's Learning Results. Select "Wild Links" and find complete lesson plans. Collect wonderful outdoor curriculum by taking a Project Wild and/or Project Wild Aquatic workshop. Practical, inexpensive workshops are offered each year in Maine; teachers leave with workbooks full of ideas and lesson plans. Find out about how to start a "Hooked on Fishing Not on Drugs" program in your school and community; it works!
Natural
Resource Education Center in Greenville offers programs that include
winter ecology field trips and educational programs on sustainable forest
practices, maple syrup gathering, adventure travel experiences, and much
more.Land for Maine's Future is a collaborative land conservation program, funded by Maine people. It has conserved thousands of acres of Maine's high value forests, trails, shores, and waters. Visit these conservation lands throughout the state. Learn how to grow and support this valuable program.
CURRICULUM ACTIVITIES FOR TEACHERS
Garbage bag shelters, northern lights, ice, winter word pictures. Ideas to help your students learn about and enjoy winter adventure….and discover the natural winter world around them.
Route Finding, Maps, Ice Travel: download and print detailed maps from the Winter Walk For The Wilds home page. Discuss map features (contours, map symbols). Mark the Conover's progress with pins/string. Create a bulletin board to log in the Conover's daily travel reports (recorded on the web site): create graphs and charts to gather and compare information on miles covered each day (students figure the mileage based on overnight camping spots). Graph the relationship of temperature to changing snow and ice conditions. (Check out the "Ice" lesson plans on this site.) Evaluate travel success based on snow and ice conditions. Rope off an ice & snow site/path near the school and record the daily temperatures and conditions and how ice and snow change over the winter. Organize a daily walk through the site (1 volunteer each day) and time how long it takes to travel the terrain, based on daily ice/snow conditions. (Students learn more about snow science and how layers bond and change by researching snow science and avalanche information sites on-line.) For a final project, students use local maps to plan and map their own "Winter Walk" on an ice route. A "walk" field trip could be planned with local Fish & Game wardens who will help students test their ice routes for safety and discuss safe winter travel (on foot or by snowsled).
More research: Native Americans have been using these canoe and ice routes to travel throughout Maine for many thousands of years. Students could contact Maine's tribes and bands (Penobscots, Micmacs, Wabanakis, Passamaquoddys) and ask for information on these ancient travel routes and the equipment used to follow them.
Winter Walking Word Pictures: Each day the Conovers will phone in reports from the trail including a special word picture (word pictures will use vivid adjectives, similes and metaphors). Students take turns making a daily poster of the Winter Walk Word Picture and then each student creates his/her word picture to add to the poster. Teachers help students by showing students how to use similes and adjectives to describe their own winter world. (Sample: Conovers: "Today was so hot (40 degrees!) on the river that we lay down on a big rock just like lizards and warmed ourselves in the sun." Student word picture: "My mom dropped a bag of nuts on the ice by the house and we ate them right off the ice just like birds at a bird feeder." (Follow up: students exchange word pictures and then draw the partner's word picture to see the words "come alive." (If an artist lacks good material he/she can ask the work picture author to add more adjectives…more word pictures to help with the drawing.)
Word Picture Archive
Winter Survival: Garbage Bag Shelters, Outdoor Dressing, and Leave No Trace Ethics: Students will need a site within walking distance of the classroom, large heavy duty garbage bags, biodegradable rope/twine, and sticks and boughs. The day before going out, discuss how to dress for the outdoors (bring some good "do" and "don't" samples of clothing) and ask them to bring/wear clothing that would keep them warm if they became lost in the woods in very cold weather. Discuss "Leave No Trace" outdoor ethics (returning the site to its former condition…or even better; picking up litter.) The site should have down or dead wood branches or teachers/parents will need to bring branches and perhaps some soft wood boughs for the site. (Use of live trees or stripping of live trees at the school is not allowed for the exercise although they might do it in the backcountry in an emergency.)
Using heavy duty garbage bags and biodegradable rope/twine, students
will create an emergency shelter.
Suggestions: tie a "ridge pole" between two close together
trees and create a stick/branch lean-to frame against this ridge pole.
Cover it with the garbage bag (split open for large surface area). Secure
edges with snow or ground material. Cover top with forest layers (duff
or boughs or snow) to insulate. Students should quickly see that shelter
must be low to the ground (to crawl into it) in order to create something
small enough to be heated with their bodies, but they can learn this in
the field. Test some shelters by shoveling snow on them or even pouring
water over them. Have 2-4 students take the temperature inside a shelter
before they occupy it and then after 20 minutes of huddling together in
it to learn what shelters and huddle groups offer the warmest shelter.
(Some teachers might organize a supervised winter sleep over in shelters.)
Return the site to an undisturbed condition (Leave No Trace) either that
day or after the shelters have been tested and evaluated by standing through
winter weather. Leave time at the end of the exercise for students to
discuss how well their clothing did or did not protect them and maybe
conduct a follow up exercise by creating a life size model equipped with
the best examples of outdoor clothing. (See "A
Snow Walker's Companion" excerpts for clothing ideas or invite
in local outfitters, guides, hunters to demonstrate how to dress for comfort
and survival.)
Conover Conversation: Students send questions to the Conovers about how they use tents and stoves to stay warm on the trip. Suggest they ask the Conovers to tell them the interior temperatures of the tent (and compare with the outdoor travel temperatures) along the way.
Even more ideas: prepare "bannock," the staple trail
food used by Indians, trappers, and the Conovers. (See menu ideas from
"A Snow Walkers
Companion"). Cook bannock on sticks over a well supervised campfire
after shelters are completed.
These lesson plans contain links, worksheets, and background information. Please note, these lesson plans are in PDF format and are fairly large (500K - 1 Meg).
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Contact Us
For more information regarding the trip, sponsorship opportunities, media
enquiries, or just to say hello please
e-mail us. Garrett and Alexandra have a volunteer who collects their
email and forwards it to them. Please remember that Garrett and Alexandra
do not have email themselves and will respond via snail-mail to your e-mail
correspondence. Should you still wish to send them email please remember
to include your snail-mail address in your message.