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Health & Fitness

Richfield Dual Language Students Meet their Match

Second-grade RDLS students meet their pen pals and spend the day at Wood Lake Nature Center enjoying spring.

The morning of Friday, April 20 was a cold one, but as the day progressed, coats were shed as hearts were warmed. After months of corresponding with complete strangers, second graders at (RDLS) finally met their pen pals from Adams Spanish Immersion School in person and spent the day learning how nature wakes up after a long winter's nap at .

Last fall all four classes of RDLS second grades were matched with second graders from Adams in St. Paul after wrote a grant and received funding for transportation and writing supplies. Campaña contacted Adams because she had previously taught there and still had many contacts who were more than willing to set this pen pal program into motion. A few of the students had more than one pen pal or were shared by two given the class size.

Over the course of the winter, students exchanged three to four letters all the while wondering what their pen pals were like in person. At 10 a.m. the RDLS students anxiously waited in the picnic area of the Wood Lake Nature Center with the names of their pen pals carefully written on sheets of paper much like they were meeting a foreign traveler at the airport. One by one each child was introduced to each other and friendships were both forged and deepened as they spent the next several hours tromping around the trails of the nature center. 

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Students were sent to four different stations throughout the center including the ampitheatre, the dock, the play area, and the picnic area with activities specifically designed to integrate science, nature, and the chance to get to know pen pals better by playing games, making art projects, writing poems, and best of all strolling through the woods together.

It was a beautiful day to be outdoors making new connections and watching life unfurl and open up just like that patch of ferns near the entrance to Wood Lake. As I watched the children meet their matches it me hope that many of these children have made life long connections that bring beauty to their lives just as the flowers and trees at Wood Lake Nature Center do to ours.

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