Schoolchildren Join Study Tour with Their Parents and Teachers

Schoolchildren Join Study Tour with Their Parents and Teachers 

Living with Nature Center

San Vicente Ilocos Sur, February 10, 2024 

Dr Abe V Rotor 

Host and Guide 

School children from Pudoc Elementary School (San Vicente, Ilocos Sur) join an educational tour at the Living with Nature Center, an on-site and lecture-demonstration learning experience. They were accompanied by their parents and teachers, who find the experience a kind of continuing and integrated learning, which educators term as open-school, distance learning, school-without-walls, continuing education, and the like.   

Top photos: A visit to the Living with Nature Center's museum, and an 18th century Basi wine cellar.  Lower photos: Author gives briefing at the start of the tour; parents and teachers pose with a wooden head of Philippine deer now a threatened wildlife.

Left: Author plays traditional Ilocano compositions like No Duadua-em Pay (If You Doubt Me), and O, Naraniag a Bulan (Oh, Bright Moon) to instill the importance of  classical Ilocano music revival.  Right, group picture of study tour members - school children from Pudoc Elementary School, with their parents and teachers.

    

   

Arboretum (mini forest) is dominated by heritage trees of 

three generations (native mango, macopa, santol, caimito, 

anahaw, and other trees) at the Living with Nature Center

Childhood with Nature Lives On, acrylic painting by AV Rotor, 2024. 

Closeup views showing Nature's unity and harmony. ~ 

            Childhood with Nature Lives On

To us grownups in our golden years reminisce

this childhood scene beautiful, young and fresh,

for we have kept Nature deep in our hearts,

her pristine beauty we nurtured to our best.

The trees now heritage for three generations,

from seeds we sowed now high rise in the sky,

singing with the breeze and birds in their nests,

sweetly taking care of their young 'til they fly.

They come back the next season, now a flock,

year after year in the same scene and order,

searching for their friends once in their prime,

but they've grown up, and are no longer there.

We wonder where have all the children now,

and where is this place once called Paradise?

Like us they followed the stream to the sea,

in search of the Good Life's grandeur and prize.

They too, shall listen to Mother Nature calling,

like birds migrating from afar returning

before the sun sets, its rays golden in the sky;

childhood lives on, listen to the trees singing. ~