samuel joel ng rui ming

The CIP was quite interesting. On the first day, the instructors
briefed us on going to the mangrove swamp. Then for fun,they played a song
about the mangrove and we had to sing along with it. Later, they told us
that we were suppose to do a project about the cip which was making a
poster. Afterwards, they told us that we would have to pull out weeds in the
manngrove and learn how to take care of the forests in Singapore.
After the briefing, we went to the school garden to practice to
measure weeds and to see what was the tempreture of the sunlight on the
garden after that, we went to the school grounds to make drawings and
observations of some trees. It was fun. Next, the instructor showed us some
weeds that we would have to pull out in the mangrove. An example was Smilax
which was a hairy weed.After we did all this, we ate a quick lunch and got
on the buses to go to the mangrove.
When we got to the mangrove, our instructor told us the tempreture of
the mangrove as we had to compare the tempreture of the mangrove to the
school garden. After this we went inside the mangrove.The joureny inside the
mangrove and the activitie we carried out there were very fun and
intresting. We saw lots of animals which some of them i have never seen
before. We saw animals such as crabs, mud lobsters, mudskippers and many
more plants and animals. We even saw the Red lobster! We also had to pull
out weeds in the mangrove. It was very fun. After we pulled out some of the
weeds, we had to go home.
A week later, we had to go to the forest to do more CIP. This time i
was quite excited as the first CIP was intresting. We had a quick lunch and
off we went to the forest. The trip to the forest proved to be very fun and
intresting. We saw lots of animals and plants such as a sun skink,
teripians, rubber trees, plams and even monkeys! We even got a picture of
one! In the forest, we measured their postions. after we did that, we pulled
them out. We pulled weeds until we had to go home. Overall, i think the CIP
was fun and intresting. I even learnt how forests were were very important
to Singapore and what we should do to consurve them.

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[SaraH]

So, what about the forest and mangrove trip I had just recently?

Looking back, I realised that I have learned a lot from the trips we
made to the Central Catchment Nature Reserve and Pasir Ris mangrove
swamp.These trips were really eye-openers, not only that, we also learned
different names of weeds that we pulled out for our Community Involvement
Programme.
There was one really hairy weed that I yanked out from the musty soil.I
later learned that its name was "HAIRY cildemia" - which explained to me the
reason for its hairiness.It was fun - pulling out weeds. I had the
dishevelled experience of a disgruntled gardener for a few minutes.We amused
ourselves with pulling out weeds and flinging them to the boardwalk, but
after a few moments, we were beginning to get bored.We had no choice -
pulling weeds was a must...
We had a hillarious experience with the monkeys at MacRitchie
Reservoir.One of my classmates even took pictures of them.We even saw a
monkey peeing! Later, we laughed ourselves sick at the sight of silly
monkeys doing stupid stuff.
A extremely fun time was spent at both venues of the field trip.I felt
that I have grown a step closer to nature. I hope that the school would
conduct more of such trips - [WITHOUT worksheets and at a more appealing
venue, for example, Sentosa.]I mean, the students would sure be more
enthusiastic about going to Sentosa, you know...

Yours sincerely,
Sarah Tan Li Lin

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