Products – Forest Synergy is a licensed Smokey Bear vendor
SMOKEY BEAR MEDALLION UPDATE
THANK YOU TO ALL WHO HAVE ORDERED
A SMOKEY BEAR MEDALLION.
THERE ARE NOW MEDALLIONS IN 41 STATES, DC, AND CANADA.
SMOKEY IS NOW HIKING WITH MANY OF YOU ON THE BEAUTIFUL WALKING STICKS YOU KEEP.
HAPPY HIKING, BE SAFE, AND HAVE A GREAT DAY.
A special story for the walking stick on the left from a recent customer. “I attached your medallion to a special hiking stick I inherited from my mother. She and my father climbed Mt. Fuji about 30 years ago with wooden sticks that were branded at rest stations along the way. If you enlarge the photo of the whole stick, you will see a series of unique stamps along it’s length. I grew up with Smokey the Bear and have enjoyed your medallion.”
STUDENTS LEARN ABOUT INCIDENT COMMAND SYSTEM
The Alexandria Fire and EMS Explores Post 1774 learned about Incident Command System. The group of energetic High School students, along with their sponsor, Lt. Donald Scott, spent an evening expanding their knowledge of leadership and project management.
The training session was recently conducted at the Alexandria, VA Fire Department. Students were exposed to the functions of Incident Command System. Examples of a trash cleanup project and an Eagle Scout project were used to parallel the ICS structure and actual student project applications.
Expectation is that this initial exposure to ICS will assist them in their pursuit of a career in structural fire and help them apply ICS principles to their daily lives.
‘Student ICS”, a book by Jim Funk, was used as the reference guide for the training. If there is interest in your group being exposed to Incident Command System, contact Jim Funk at 502 545-1481 or email at forestsynergy@gmail.com.
New Release: STUDENT ICS by James D Funk
Would you or your student benefit from learning organizational skills to carry out projects?
Do you have a student that is considering leadership in organizations such as scouting, 4H, FFA, or school activities?
Could your organization benefit from learning the principles of Incident Command System?
This book is for you. Student ICS is an interactive program to teach ICS principles to students for use in their daily lives. Emergency managers use ICS for all types of incidents. Student ICS teaches the principles by paralleling student applications to examples in managing wildfire incidents. A set of group exercises is included to make the learning fun as well as informative.
Our grandson recently learned ICS as part of Boy Scouts and used the organization to complete his Eagle Scout project of building flag retirement boxes for veteran’s organizations.
Student ICS can be purchased at Amazon.com for $19.95. Forest Synergy is interested in getting our youth to use organizational leadership in their daily life. This early practice is a foundation for structural organization as they grow into work and career advancements.
Thank you for checking out Student ICS. I am very interested in your feedback and would love to provide your stories of success in future writings. For questions or comments contact me at forestsynergy@gmail.com.
Here is something just for fun. I have tried to get a developer to produce a simple set of golf items to play what I call “Beach Golf” – One patent pending. Try this next time you are at the beach. Help the kids build simple to complex golf holes. While they are building, slip in a few physics principles like gravity, acceleration, and friction. Make them challenging if you want. Save a trip to the mini golf course and educate while having fun. They won’t even notice they are learning. Watch the short video and if you have time, read my personal story of Beach Golf.
BEACH GOLF – A PERSONAL STORY – Beach Golf is designed to be an interactive building, learning, and overall fun family activity. To see how kids would react to the idea I gathered my 4 grandkids, ages 5-11, at the beach on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and I showed them a hole I designed. They played the hole and then immediately ran to an area of sand to start building their own. Their excitement and enthusiasm led to some interesting ideas. Some were a little ambitious and had room for structural design changes, yet the ideas they came up with were great. I was allowed to have input into some basic physics principles and ways to make the design work better. One of their designs had a tunnel that went down about a foot and came back up to the green. OOPS, they struck water! Hints work wonders!
They jumped over hazards, through arches, and around pillars. My granddaughter, the artistic one, ventured on her own and created holes with multiple options and designs that required multiple shots to reach the green. Her desire was to create an entire 9-hole course.
This quick story gives you an idea of how kids react to opportunities to be creative and to have a new fun and learning experience. Did the adults get involved? Of course, they are just bigger kids that couldn’t let the little ones have all the fun.
We hope your experiences with Beach Golf are as much fun as ours. To give you a few starting ideas for hole-design, we have diagramed some of the ideas the kids and I came up with. Holes can vary from the sure thing (the Snake) to the true challenge. The littlest ones love to decorate the holes with bridges, castles, and any other sand toys you may have around. Above all – Have FUN.
The Snake is fun and leads to success from the smallest of aspiring golfers. The added features make it a personal piece of Beach Golf art. As long as it goes downhill, the hole can be as long as your imagination desires.