Big picture, communities are more resilient when people know each other, and watershed ecosystems are healthier (humans, too) when all are living in a kind of extended kinship relationship--where familial care and nurturing is extended to all beings. We have already begun our "Watershed Family" learning campaign, introducing you to our relatives and their habitats in our wider community each week on Facebook or Instagram.
The Mission Possible: Watershed Family Scavenger Hunt/Art Project is a community and family event, functioning as a fun learning event at multiple levels.
Here's how it will work:
Families and Teams, (individuals can request to be matched with a team by us) choose whether you want to begin on Friday 29th and finish the morning of the 30th (before Santa comes to Mystic), or whether you want to do it all on the 30th.
You can start now by collecting "clean recycling" (cardboard, egg cartons, packaging materials) for the art projects.
You can also CAREFULLY pick up trash near storm drains and waterways and bag it. Before you trash or recycle the garbage you clean up, be sure to take a selfie with it!! This will cause your neighbors to ask what the heck you are up to...at which point you can tell them about the Alliance! Bring those selfies with you on Saturday morning!
The Scavenger Hunt part of Mission Possible challenges families to locate things like: the biggest tree, most blocked culvert or storm drain, count how many times roads cross the estuary (or Whitford Brook), how many new houses are being built, letters of the alphabet formed in nature, most amazing moss patch, coolest fungus, fuzziest, smoothest, yellowest, etc. thing you can find, or the super-challenge of locating specific species. Your team can document it with a drawing in your field book (provided by us), or by uploading a selfie with it to a qr code.
Saturday we will have access to the classroom at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, as well as (hopefully! Not confirmed yet!) to Pequot cultural guides who will teach us some traditional tracking and plant knowledge skills -- getting to know the behavior and roles our beyond human kin play in our lives as well as how to find them. Also, we will be joined by Rashad Young, artist, musician, and director of the Pequot Language Revitalization Program to show us some traditional art making and also play the ecological Relationship and Pequot language learning card game (developed by kids last summer), helping to explain the cultural and ecological significance of the kinship relationships supporting human ones.
Also in the classroom, participants will find art supplies, relationship games, the wetlands/watershed Enviroscape demo, and the Watershed Family Relationship Map. Art projects will focus on clean recycling as a medium, with any creations possible. Also, for families with small children, pre-cut animal shapes for decoration and coloring book pages will be available. The relationship maps will help people locate themselves and their neighbors in the watershed--human relationships are important too!
And of course there will be food, and the feeling of belonging and resilience that comes from breaking bread together and reflecting on family, extended family, and nurturing communities of care.
The classroom is also the place to tally up points for various elements of the scavenger hunt, to draw door prizes as well as award prizes (winning takes different forms) to the participants.
We believe our Watershed Family Mission is possible. What about you?
Keep checking your email for Registration!! Tell your friends and make a team!
Get ready for some fun and learning!
Are you looking for a way to help out??
Volunteers are NEEDED NOW:
Help with spreadsheets and email lists; invitations
Asking for donated prizes (event/Alliance ambassador)
Distributing flyers (Alliance ambassadors)
Identifying locations and trails; setting up qr codes and/or objects to find
Making sure our tax-free papers are filed with McQuades, Michael's, Staples...
Volunteer For the event:
Help with Relationship Map; art projects
Signing people in, scorekeeping
Setting up and cleaning up
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