Survival events, goat attacks and nuns

Spent the past few days trolling Google for survival related news and while I didn’t come across anything as exciting a man surviving on windshield wiper fluid for five days I did find a brief explanation of what I am sure will be an fun day for the students at a Sudbury school.

Today (Thursday) the kids of Northeastern Elementary School in Sudbury “will host a school-wide survival event to promote literacy,” according to a story posted on Northernlife.ca.

It is called “SURVIVE THIS!, the Indoor/Outdoor Wilderness Survival Challenge” and kids from junior kindergarten to grade 8 will get to spend three hours playing with “survival props” in dramatic scenarios, engage in camaraderie building exercises and learn about making high energy foods.

Even if the games are a bust their speakers will include a woman named Hope Jungblut, who climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, according to the story.

I love that this school is organizing this type of event. In elementary school anything related to science or the outdoors gave me a huge thrill.

We had a great science teacher named Ann with a silvery blond ponytail who was fond of bringing her collection of her personal pets to school.

I still remember the weight of her boa constrictor around my neck, the musty smell of her pet opossum and the excitement of cracking open her owl's pellets to sort through the mouse bones inside.

(They swallow the animals whole. When you open the dry pellets you can find close to complete skeletons. Click here for a virtual owl pellet disection!)

I was in absolute heaven.

At least until I recklessly chose to open my bag of cheese crackers near the menagerie and was ambushed from behind by her pet goat.

For a brief moment we, a silvery bearded beast and a chubby kilted girl with braces, formed a grossly awkward conga line.

I shook off my fright and the goat in about two seconds.

One of the mothers was fairly upset. The nuns, arranged in one of their customary clusters nearby, showed no signs of excitement.

I would love to know what kinds of survival or outdoor training kids are getting in school in the GTA. I know members of the P.I.N.E project, a group that strives to educate children about the outdoors, has visited at least one school.

 Sure the Sudbury event will go off without a hitch. Guessing there will not be any goats.

Comments

[Frank]

I have not seen much from my son's elementary school like you would see up in Sudbury. There is a bunch of stuff aimed at street proofing and dealing with strangers but that is a different form of survival. I think that in the GTA you have to teach your own kids how to build a safe fire, chop wood, use a compass, and other such useful things.