News | 31 March 2010
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Students of SMP (Junior High School) Hang Tuah 18 Sidoarjo Get Closer to the Nature

Students who visit Petungsewu Wildlife Education Center (P-WEC) come not only from Malang city, where the center is situated but also from other cities in Indonesia. Last 20 March 2010, students from SMP Hang Tuah 18 Sidoarjo (Junior High School, age 13 – 15 students) followed the center’s education program called "One Day Nature".

Sidoarjo is about an hour and half by bus from P-WEC. The visit to P-WEC was intended for the students to learn about nature and as a recreational activity. Their advisor teacher said," The students always study indoors. This time they will learn about nature experientially as they have no time to play while learning in the natural environment because they are busy with school programs and extra curricular activities."

In P-WEC, they played and enjoyed five educational games. The first game was "caterpillar feet", where they were barefooted and blindfolded walking in mud. The intention of this game was to let the students feel other creatures on their feet dipped in the mud. The second one was "thin cat" where students were asked to act like a hungry cat needed to be fed. The third game was "blind circus". This game was teaching students to know how it felt to be circus animals. The fourth was "losing habitat". In this game, numbers of students were given some meter square rug and they had to stand on it. P-WEC team would fold the rug to describe how the animals losing their habitats while students should piggyback, hold, or carry each other to keep all of them standing on the rug. The last game was wildlife adoption so students can learn how to love animals and trees without keeping them at their houses.

All the participants really had fun following each game. They shared laughter but also learned about nature and wildlife conservation at the same time. Some students told P-WEC that they should have stayed overnight and played more games in P-WEC.