Witte Museum Week 2 - Ellen Foreman

 

Week 2: Embracing Texas

~July 17, 2023~

This week, I was assigned to work with the Science Samplers for most of Monday and Tuesday, and then move on to facilitate Blast from the Past: Farm Edition for the rest of the week. Since I arrived extra early this morning, I helped prepare some of the lab coats and goggles that campers would be decorating later during the week and helped open the HEBBA building with two other team members. We worked on creating molecule models, and then I moved on to perform lunch coverage for the other camp.

Unfortunately, the HEBBA basement/kitchen (where the farm camp was taking place) suffers from a condition of chronically setting record-low temperatures, which isn’t a problem if you only plan to relax in the toddler’s play area or sift through boxes in the pantry for a few minutes, can be taxing if you have to settle in for camp for several hours. Although I encouraged the campers to start remembering to bring their jackets, I thought it might be a good opportunity for me to become acclimated to experiencing the cold of upstate New York, where I will be moving to for college. After watching Bluey for a while with the campers, which they are absolutely addicted to, I returned to the science camp to help clean up for the day.

View into HEB Lantern Hall

"Witte Kitty" sighting

~July 18, 2023~

Today was a little bit more exciting because we had bubble activities planned for the day. We started out by designing bubble wands and handing campers water and soap solutions, and then passing around extra ingredients for them to add to the soap including sugar, glycerin, and corn syrup (hopefully they didn’t ingest too much of the sugar). As part of the afternoon session of the camp, a kiddie pool was filled with water and campers would stand on cinder blocks as two interns pulled a hula hoop over them to create large bubbles. We made sure to take lots of pictures to share with their parents! In the evening, I headed back over to the offices to help sort out photos on the iPads.

                   

                           The giant bubble ring                   Making bubble wands with the other interns

~July 19, 2023~

Although it was a relatively uneventful day of camp, the campers created little farm animals out of a Play-Doh-like material, which I thought were really cute. Even though the kids first started out by making them all out of uniform color, they soon discovered that they could make more interesting patterns by mixing together some of the clay. We left them all to dry so that they would be ready for their final project on Wednesday. Apart from that, we went outside to play a South Texas Trailblazers game, freeze tag, and Foursquare. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy playing with all of them so much, but since it was a very small camp (only six campers), I felt like we connected better as a group.

As I was getting ready to end my shift for the day, I started talking to a man who was interested in knowing how our generation used social media and technology – his team was thinking about implementing QR codes within exhibits so that people could scan them and read the displays in other languages. After he asked me what college I was going to, he told me that he was a Dartmouth alum and mentioned some of the similarities between both of our colleges, Dartmouth and Cornell. It was very interesting to hear his perspective on his college experience in general!

         

                                Yoga session with the campers                              Farm animals                                       

~July 20, 2023~

Today, our camp focused on architecture, specifically on the styles used for farmhouses and barns. This was a good chance to spend some time in the spaces located outside the Witte Museum, which are often neglected in people’s visits to the museum because of the heat. However, since we were so cold from being down in the basement, we gladly took the opportunity to go out and investigate the ceilings, trusses, and fretwork of buildings such as the Tremblay Family Café and the Onderdonk Artist Studio as part of an architecture scavenger hunt. After watching Home on the Range for our lunch hour we continued with some more arts and crafts activities.

In the evening, I helped fold and staple together several dozen field guide information booklets (there were many more pamphlets than I thought there would be). While I was working, Alana Zamora came over to speak with me and let me know that she was also a YAP alum! I was excited to speak with somebody else who had been part of the YAP program and we discussed the similar experiences we had had throughout our Washington Week.

Onderdonk Artist Studio

~July 21, 2023~

Friday was an exciting day for our campers because it was time to finalize the art projects that they had created the clay farm animals for on Wednesday, and more importantly, to start working on their 3D barns. I’m surprised that any of the barns remained intact because they were built out of cookies with a chocolate cake base – a good portion of the campers definitely opted to eat part of their craft materials instead of using them for structural reinforcement (I even had a slice, too). With only five campers left, we had plenty of time to come up with ideas to make their projects shine.

Since it was the very last day of camp, I spent most of my afternoon prepping for the next week of camp by going down to the HEBBA kitchen and sorting out the peanut butter granola bars from the regular chocolate bars, and heading to the Feik Family Pavilion and the Public Programs Department offices to take inventory of the camp t-shirts.

This week, I started going to the Tremblay Family Café for lunch instead of just staying in the break room – at first I thought I would only get the quesadillas, but then I tried the sunflower butter and honey sandwich and it was surprisingly very good!

Some of the art projects the campers made!

~July 25, 2023~

I didn’t come into work Monday this week because I had scheduled an appointment to get my ID renewed (as exciting as it sounds). But on Tuesday, I finally got back to being a part of camp life, as part of the Art of Nature camp. Since we were looking at bugs today, we had a morning art session where the kids transformed several different kinds of pasta into butterflies and beetles, and then we warmed up outside before lunch by rock climbing on Mt. Witte (some of the kids almost managed to reach the bell at the very top!). After watching Brother Bear for lunch, I helped them fold together paper butterflies to look 3D, and then they had the chance to complete more drawings of bugs with finger painting. Since there wasn’t any aftercare again this week, I stopped by at the café for a paleta at the end of camp, and then I worked on my blog for a little while. I started speaking with one of the interns, and then her mom invited us to come visit the museum’s chief team offices to briefly speak with Marise McDermott, the museum’s President and CEO. I let her know that I was having a fantastic time during the internship portion of my YAP experience!

What’s interesting about this week’s camp is that we have quite a few campers that speak Spanish, which has definitely helped me become more comfortable with my Spanish speaking skills!

Bugs and butterflies!

~July 26, 2023~

Because today was fish day, in the morning, after completing some fish paintings, we ventured outside to visit a San Antonio River model (which is overlooking the river that divides the Witte Museum from Brackenridge Park and the San Antonio Zoo), and do some more climbing on the rock wall, since not everyone had had the chance to go the day before. Just before noon, I was scheduled to attend a demo where we had the chance to feel the pelts of a spotted skunk, a striped skunk, a ringtail (nicknamed the miner’s cat because they kept rodents out of mining caves), an American beaver, and an Eastern cottontail rabbit. I was surprised to find out how soft they were, and that rabbits have the highest mortality rate of any animal (I guess not every animal’s mortality rate is 100% after all?).

When I came back from lunch, it was time for some painting with chalk – this was one of the more difficult activities we did since it was hard for the children’s small hands to navigate the blocky pieces of chalk at times. We wrapped up the afternoon session of camp by using the God’s eye technique to create sea turtles! It was fun to see how well they turned out.

Sea turtle crafts

Finally, I was called to attend a demo at the People of the Pecos Lifeways Lab. Although I expected the presentation to only last for a few minutes, almost an hour had passed before we finished our discussion of the people that had flourished for so long in Texas. One of the things that struck me the most was that Daemon, our facilitator, mentioned that the Witte Museum wanted to refer to the People of the Pecos as “thriving”, not just as “surviving”. After all, you can’t live for 10,000 years in the same area without acquiring a deep understanding of the natural forces around you. Through exploring how they weaved together items such as snare traps, baskets, and sandals from the fibers of the sotol, yucca, and lechugilla plants, we learned how they were truly able to thrive. We even had the opportunity to learn how to twine sotol fibers by making sure to hold the tension between the four thin strands properly. Afterwards, we discussed how they hunted their prey either by hurling darts or using boomerang-shaped rabbit sticks, and then we explored the Witte Museum’s commitment to unearthing the mysteries of the People of Pecos, as the museum’s teams have been studying them since the 1930s and the museum has actually just been transferred the ownership of the White Shaman Preserve.

"Feeling Pelts" and "Creating Cordage" demos

I almost forgot to mention that I met Liz again today! I was so nice to see another YAP person in-person again :)

Me and Liz