Service for International Coastal Clean Up: 9/12/15

This past Saturday was a total blast. For the first time this fall, the Ospreys came back together. Now in their second year of EC, they felt completely comfortable jumping right back into things, and it was as if we did not miss a beat.

We started our day on the front yard of an EC family's house. As gals gathered, we played pack leader, met some new Seastars, and broke the ice with goofy dance moves. From there, we opened our day with a reminder of our service ethic, a discussion of International Coastal Cleanup, and stories from our EMAs about their experiences doing this outing years ago. Hannah described our magic cup and how even service fills our cup while we are filling the cup of others and our community. The girls discussed how good it feels to do service and what a difference something like cleaning a beach makes for our entire community and world. This outing is particularly special because we really are making a BIG impact; we talked about the trash we are picking up comes from all over the world, and how this outing connects us with the other 500,000 members of coastal communities globally, who also participated in the International Coastal Cleanup.   

Hannah describes the Magic Cup.

After this, we talked about the process for picking up trash off the beach. Surprisingly, there is a TON to think about. The girls helped create a plan for how we would remove trash, sort the trash, and lug it all back up to the cars at the end of the day.

Before heading for the beach, Holly taught us even more about how the tides affect all this garbage. We were lucky to be at the beach during a super low tide, and before playing we discussed how tides bring garbage in and how it ends up staying washed on a beach rather than just being swept away again. To reinforce all this teaching, plus have some fun, we played a crazy game of tide tag where Holly acts as the moon, and the girls try to tag her, but can only move during low tides which completely depend on her moon phase. This game is not only fun, but really helps reinforce how things move around the beach and how different tides can be.

Holly as a waxing moon.

At this point, it was time to go serve! We broke into groups: log lookers, sand seekers, and shoreline searchers to start our clean up. During these few hours the girls worked hard, goofed around, and found some crazy things.

Cora collected our garbage and danced for us!

 One group found a decaying dog fish shark that we eventually dissected! During our dissection, we saw the shark's eggs, heart, and stomach. The smell was a bit over whelming for some, but for those who could handle it, we learned tons! 

We finished our day by writing letters to the beach in the sand; girls had the chance for a brief moment of quiet to thank the ocean in any way they wanted and allowed everyone to take in the beauty of this space without games or noise. 

The girls spread out along the beach to thank the ocean.

After our thank you to the beach, we lugged all the trash up the hill to the driveway. We did our closing circle by sharing our Attitude of Gratitude and talking about ways we can make a difference for the beach and ocean. Time after time, the girls come up with impressive ways they can help their community and change the world for the better. As always, thanks for sharing your daughters with us for a few hours. They are fantastic kids!

To see a photo album from our day, click here.