4/11-4/15
I have always thought the idea of being dropped off in a remote location and being forced to live off the land for a few days sounded exciting! Welcome to Survival Quest!!! Ok, so we are not going to do that to the heroes (this year), but they are being challenged to learn skills that will help them survive in many different situations.
In the Spark Studio… we are exploring important survival skills such as how to care for a plant, how to care for an animal, essentials in a first aid kit, all about our first responders and how they help us, navigating the roads around us, wants vs needs, memorizing our phone number and address, and being aware of our surroundings, to name just a few. For example, new works in the studio challenge the heroes to practice calling home, identify a variety of seeds, identify plants used for remedies, tie knots, and much more.
Baby kittens and baby quails visited our studio and we learned about how they survive. We practiced being aware of our surroundings when exploring outside.
Heroes also explored teamwork in partner yoga, figured out on their own how to take turns with the baby kitten, and are focused on the habit of focusing during work cycle.
In the Fire Studio… Over the course of the next 5 weeks, your heroes will be gaining the skills to stay confident and calm in outdoor, emergency, and irregular situations.
The heroes will be spending their quest time researching and practicing skills such as first aid, fire, shelter, knots, weather, natural disasters, animals, and foraging. Every time they complete a challenge they are able to create a reference card. The final day of quest will be a survivor game out in the wild testing the heroes on all of the challenges they will have had access to. They can bring the reference cards they created during the quest to help them. Each hero will start the game with the life points they’ve earned throughout the session by completing fun, quick challenges which ask them to do something hard. The stakes will be higher at the final game, with more life points gained or lost depending on how they do in the game. Their lunch that day will correspond to their life points/health level at the end of the game. 🙂
We look forward to spending each Thursday in a different outdoor setting where we can use the skills we’re learning to do real things.
During Core Skills the heroes decided to experiment with using the habit of setting and accomplishing goals rather that earning points to track their Freedom Levels. So far the experiment seems positive as heroes are focusing on a developing a life long habit rather than earning meaningless points. Heroes are also better able to work on what they want to, without worrying about how many points it earns them. It felt like a step in a meaningful direction.
Life can be hard. Emergencies do occur. Challenges come to all of us. It is awesome to watch our heroes in both studios build stamina, practice doing hard things, learn emergency skills, and have a blast while doing it! We are all excited for the next 4 weeks of “survival”!!