My most memorable moments at camp were: making my mask, the frog competition, and making new friends. I also learned a lot about the rain forest. My mask ended up being a panda it is really cute. The frog competition was about finding the best frog species!!!!!!!!!! But, my team in 4th place ;aka dead last!!!!!!!! The 4 competitions were on: jumping , skin, eating, and poisonous accuracy. I also made many new friends here at camp. Camp here was so fun!!!!!!!!!!! And I would love to come back any time!!!!!!!!

I can’t believe it’s the last day. I’m really sad. I wish we could do it again. Today we were supposed to be bats. When we tried to collect the insects in the trees we couldn’t catch them. The mist net thing where we through the paper airplanes was easy. It was pretty hard when we tried to bring the blueberry bead type things to the plastic tube. The hardest thing was when we had to catch the fish. Even though some things were hard, I still had a lot of fun.

I have had a great time at camp this week.  Even though some of the activities were difficult today, I really liked them.  My favorite activity was the one that we did today where we were in the “forest” and we had to find the bugs and throw them so that the other people in our group could catch them.  My group didn’t do very well, but it was still fun.  My favorite movie was the Bat Women of Panama, because I learned a lot about bats that I didn’t know.  I liked making the masks from Panama.  I had a lot of fun this week.

first we arrived and walked down thestairs. then we split into 4 groups. we played 6 games 1 we threw paper airplanes at nets. 2 we threw bugs into nets. 3 we used tubes to suck up water. 4 we picked up beads with tongs. 5 we caught paper fish. 6 we had to guess where the candy was then ate lunch and worked on our molas. 

 I really enjoyed this camp i especially enjoyed the thing that we did on the last day in which we did a variety of simulations about bats. the simulations about bats were mainly about the things that bats eat such as nectar, insects, fish, and fruit. we also finished are molas which are a decorative panamainian art form. 

Today is the last day of camp for me, and I have had a lot of fun on the way!  My favorite activity was today’s, when we did activities to teach us about bats.  My favorite part of it was when we went through the “jungle,” and tossed the bugs we found to eachother.  I also finished up my mola, in this case, a cloth with other pieces of cloth glued on.  It has a picture of a dolphin on it, but I didn’t have time to put stripes on.

A few of the other activities that I did during the week included excavating bones, invasive species, and communication between bees.

All in all, I had a great time during camp this week, and learned a lot of useful information that I can use later on.

this week i really had fun at camp. Some of my favorite activities are listed below.

1. My favorite activity was the fish catching simulation.
2. the second most fun thing i did was the video conference to Panama.
3. the third was making masks and molas.

My favorite part of camp was the fun competition with mr. Shifflet. Him

His games/competitions were fun and the compition was exciting.  I enjoyed every thing he did.

Well i guess that is it for this week

the last day of camp!!!! my favorite activitys were probaly making a mola and my mask! that was really cool!

and after that i kinda liked the bat woman of panama it was pretty intresting hot a false vampire bat did  not drink blood!!!! it was cool!

we watched the most inspiring, , and coolest, movie EVER!!! ! !!!it was about the bat women of panama. It is the best!! I sat down feeling “all smart” about bats. but there were so many thing actions, species, and and behavior. diets, and skills was something that i didn’tknow. there are bats that eat fish. i thought that bats hated water but the great bulldog bat is amazing. it makes its talons fish hooks and uses echolocation to find fish. But not only the bats were amazing but the women who spent their time catching bats in a mist net. they could of been sleeping (which in fact i like a lot) but they researched bats. the mist netting is not a easy thing to set up. first you have to put them up but some time when it is not dark. then you can go back at night time. you go through the mist net and untangle the bats and put them in a bag and take it to a tent. in the tent you have to examine the bat. find out what species the bat is. then tag it if needed. then give it sugar water for coopoperating. there are steps that i forgot but my hand hurts and i am better at telling with my mouth. sorry.

to conclude i think that this is the best smithsoniam camp ever!!!!!!!

To day is a sad sad day because its my last day and so i am going to mention my favorite parts.

1. when we did the darts with the frogs it was so so so fun and i really ant to show my BFFL’s!
2. when we did the bee dance i thout it was realy amazing knowing that bees actualy do it too.
3. when we did the bat traps it was also fun because we did it in the dark.
4. when we went in the rain forest trying to find the bags it was awesome!!!!!!! because we were getting pushed in a cool cart :)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5. when we hand made the molas it was challenging but rewarding.
6. and when we made are masks it was so so so cool.
7. but my absolute favorite was when we got to talk to my favorite scientist sunshine van duvel   

 and i think id have to say rain forest reserchers is my faveorite CAMP EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today I made the hardest decision in my life.

I choose my favorite scientist :

Eldredge Bermingham

he is my favoite because I like fishing and I think it would be awsome

THIS IS THE BEST SMITHSONIAN CAMP EVER!!!!!!

It is my last day of camp where dose the time go. One of my favorite things was doing the bug canopy crain. Where you go in a canopy crane and some one how grabed the bugs and throw into the net. Finely I love the movie at the end of the day.

Some of my favorite activties are being batty and being a frog.  We did two crafts.  The craft we did first was a mask from Panama and then we made a mola from the Kuna Culture of Panama.  The scientist I really enjoyed the most was Sunshine Van Bael when she video conferenced with us and ran a pretend rainforest over with a pretend bulldozer.  This camp was an excellent camp and I would like to do again next time.  

this is the last day of camp the week was really cool.we played a whole lot of games and had a lot of laughs at camp!!!!! the picture at the top is me and my mask that i made at camp.the type of mask is panamanian.

    Today is my last day at a camp called Rainforest Researchers.  I’ve had a great time and I’ve learned alot.  One of my favorite activities was making a mola.  Molas are cloth pictures that women from Panama make to put on their dresses.  Another really cool thing that we’ve done was that we had a video conference with a scientist in Panama on Monday.   She told us about her job and explained how to make chocolate from cacao beans.  We played lots of fun games that were about animals that scientists we learned about had studied.  My favorite game was one about frogs. Overall, I’ve really liked this camp.      

My favorite thing that we did the week was the “frog Olympics.”  For all yoyu people who dont know what that is it was when we spilt up into 4 groups to see “who could be the best frog”.  There were 4 different stations and we rotated around to each one.  I started off at the dart were we used a tooth pick and a straw and u put the tooth pick in the straw and tried to get it in one of the cups on the wall….. we got 2 points… * whimper whimper*.  Then we went to frog jumping where we had to see how far we could jump. my team got 82 inches!!! * thrusts fist in air*.  Then we went to frog eating where we got a party blower with a magnet on the bottom and we had to blow it out and see how many fake insects with magnets we could pick up we got…. well i dont queit remember…. but im sure it was good!!!  Then the last thing was about frog skin where we have a sponge a bucket of water and 2 small empty buckets. So you get the sponge filled up with water and put in 1 of the small buckets then you get down and hop to the other small bucket and squeeze out the water from the sponge and by the time it was over we got 10.5 cm of water in the bucket we got to by the third best frog! Anyway that was my favorite thing this week!!!

In this camp we did many entertaing things, from chocolot (chocolate), to Panama. We didn’t really stay on a subject for more than a day, except rainforests and blogs. Some of the projects were netting fake fish, watching movies, eating chocolate, shooting fake blow darts, blogging, and more. (whew!) The activities were different, but about the same thing, the rainforest.

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This week we  did a lot of reasearch.  We also  learned about  bats and how they use ecolocation.   When we studied Stanley Rand we learned a lot about frogs, such as that they can breathe through their skin and communicate with frog sounds.  We also built a grid and studied fossils and bones just like Richard Cooke does.  Today we are flying bats and checking them out like Elizabeth Kalko.  This camp has been fun and I might want to be a scientist.

        On our final day in the camp rainforest reaserchers we did molas.  Molas are from Panama.  They are made of cloth and in Panama only women make them.  it is part of their dress. We also are doing bats and learning about the bat researchers. 
We watched a movie called Bat Women of Panama.   Overall, the whole week has been full of reaserch and it made for a wonderful summer!

Today in the morning we did a bunch of activities about frogs. We did target practice with “poison darts”, practiced leaping like frogs, catiching “bugs”, and carrying water in our “skin” (a sponge).

a poison dart frog

We are aslo making masks by covering milk jugs with plaster that are supposed to be like the masks made by the natives in Panama.

There were a lot of funs things we did at camp this week. One of my favorites was an activity were we had to catch rubber fish and measure and weigh them, and we got certain amounts of money for different fish. I also liked the activity were we got to do a bunchg of things relating to frogs, like “poison” dart shooting, leaping, and eating bugs.I aslo learned a lot about rainforests, and a buncyh of animals the live in them. My favorite animal was definetly the bad, it is amazing how so many different types co-exist in such a crowded place. I hope I can go to STRI one day. 

                          My favorite activity was when we learned about Stanley Rand who studied Poison Dart Frogs. I liked this one because one of the things we did was take straws and put toothpicks in them, then blowing them out into cups on the wall and on my first try I got 5 points.  The natives of Panama would hunt with blow darts and they would take the Poison Dart Frogs in leaves and wipe their darts on them.  I think it would be really hard to hunt this way.  

So long camp, this is the last post I am writing. Thinking back on the week the one thing I remember most is how funny looking and mad Charlie looked when we kept accidently splatering him with water in the second event were we had to fill up a sponge with as much water as possible and hop  to a plastic bin, squeezing it out and hop back.my legs were and still are sore for three days, THREE DAYS. It wasn’t just that, in the third event we had to jump as far as possible from a frog position, my best was 72 inches. that was my favorite event of my favorite day.

My favorite activity at camp was when we were catching fake bugs on the second day of camp. My group caught all 35 of them. All the “bugs” were fishing lures with magnets taped  on them. We would catch the “bugs” with rolled up party favor “tounge things” that had magnets attached.

On the second day of camp I jumped 90 inches when we were doing a frog activity. We were honouring Stanley Rand’s study of frogs. I did alright at my first activity of doing jumping around trying to hold as much water in my skin (sponge) as possible. During the second activity my group as a whole messed up as we only got 1 point. The third activity I managed to jump a distance that surprised almost everyone; 90 whole inches (in my opinion 95 inches). On the last activity my group got all of the bugs with are tounges (party favors with magnets) with a total of 35 bugs. This manage for us to claim victory by six points.

I learned a lot at camp. Mask making was a lot of fun. I made a mask that looked like an iguana. The plastering was really hard. I like chocolate. I learned that white chocolate really isn’t chocolate.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm……….. Panama! Panama is really pretty. Let’s find another picture. Wow, I like that one!