Southwest Florida Middle School Weather Camp – 2016 – Day 1 Reflective Journal Entries
Garrett H. – “I liked taking [observations of] my shadow for four hours [and predicting its movement]. I also liked looking at satellites, hurricanes, and NOAA’s warnings, watches, and advisories. I really enjoyed making a cloud. I didn’t enjoy making a weather balloon because I do not like to do arts and crafts, but I enjoyed most of my time. Waking up at 6:40 AM is not fun, but weather camp is worth it. I enjoyed finding out about gas, liquid, and solid [phase change] features like evaporation, condensation, melting, freezing, and so on.”
Tom M. – “I was scared [at first, going into camp,] because I was the last [of the campers to arrive,] but then it got very interesting and fun. We went to look at our shadows and each time we came back out they got shorter and shorter, then we saw an elephant cloud [and experienced] nephelococcygia. That’s [a] long [word]! Then we went and got sandwiches and chips. There was turkey, cheese, bread, and Cheetos and Doritos. We saw hurricanes in the Pacific and the hotspot [where they form]. We now are on a quest to build balloons, [and we] glued [tissue] paper together as our sheets for the balloon. Today was fun! Yay!”
Jolette G. – “I liked the part when we were doing the balloon project, [and] I liked the part when we ate sandwiches for lunch. One of my friends, Jake, and I glued tissue paper for our balloon project. The thing we all mainly did was trace our shadows outside. Today I learned so much, I love this camp.”
Jake N. – “Today was awesome because we made our own sandwiches at lunch and we shared stuff about movies and hot air balloons. I met some new friends such as Garrett, Jolette, and Tom. We learned about nephelococcygia. It means a picture seen in the clouds. We were seeing how our shadows were affected by the sun every hour. It was getting smaller and going to the left. Last but not least we started working on the weather balloons. We did the sheets. This was my awesome first day at weather camp!”