Community Learning: Off-Campus Trips, Imaginopolis, and Harvest Fair

Emigrant Wilderness
Eighth graders launched their “senior” year with an outstanding four-day backpack trip in the Emigrant Wilderness. Led by the staff from Go Adventure and chaperoned by SCDS teachers, the trip is an excellent next-step physical challenge for students who have completed overnight hiking trips in sixth and seventh grade. The trip also launches an eighth grade “senior” year filled with opportunities for students to strengthen bonds with classmates and to reflect upon their SCDS education.
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Point Reyes
Led by Go Adventure with SCDS faculty chaperones, the fall Point Reyes seventh grade overnight hiking and camping trip offers great practice for the future multiple-day eighth grade hiking trip. Two groups—seventh grade boys and seventh grade girls—set off from the same trailhead for separate group campsites for memorable (and for some initial) overnight outdoor experiences during which they pitch their own tents, cook their own food, and engage in reflective and team-building activities.
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Four Winds Ropes Course
Sixth graders launched their school year with an important personal growth and team building opportunity through a fall day trip to the Four Winds team building and leadership training ropes course. The bonding experience is an important component of the sixth grade SEL curriculum and an important preparation for future upper school outdoor educational experiences.
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Angel Island
Attention, Sir! For several years fifth graders have enjoyed an overnight living history excursion to Angel Island led by Lt. Ben Bacon and Lt. Zack Long. As part of the experience, student follow military protocol ("Yes Sir!" being the preferred response), endure hardships (hardtack, a night hike, and guard duty), and experience the joys (letters from home and a boat ride) of Union Army recruits during the Civil War.
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Imaginopolis: The Global Cardboard Challenge
There were only smiles in Imaginopolis, the community created at SCDS as part of the annual Global Cardboard Challenge (GCC). The community event involved SCDS students and parents along with like-minded families from other Sonoma County schools. While we participated last year in the Global Cardboard Challenge—which was inspired by the short film, Caine’s Arcade, and is presented by the nonprofit Imagination Foundation—this year we partnered with Sonoma County Office of Education (SCOE) to host the challenge as a community event. Participants came together and built…well...anything they could dream up using cardboard, recycled materials, and their imaginations! Then, they spent time together enjoying and showing off their creations!
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Harvest Fair: Good Fun for a Good Cause
Speaking of community, CDP SLUGS provided a wonderful setting for the SCDS community to come together and enjoy one another. Friday’s Harvest Fair—featuring a host of fun and engaging activities, a spectacular farmers market, and displays of garden-based lessons and home gardens—was as fun as it was purposeful. Our business park neighbor, the Redwood Empire Food Bank, benefited from the generosity of families who either shopped at the farmers market or put a gift in the REFB donation cans.