Atlantic Dunes Park- Delray Beach, FL

This field trip was a slightly different from the previous field trips our group has been visiting. This location is on the beach and the nature trail is along the dunes of the shoreline. I particularly enjoyed this field trip because I am huge beach lover and always make time to visit the soothing atmosphere the beach offers. We had the pleasure of listening to Professor Brown of Florida Atlantic University’s Education Department. She spoke about the important of finding art within nature and using nature as a wonderful tool for art inspired activities. During her brief discussion we had hands on experience with creating our very own work of art of out the leaves and other plant material we could find along the dune path. I loved how nothing is wrong in art and how creativity takes forms in all ways. Art allows you to use the nature as your canvas and create beauty out of anything in sight. We also had two young girls walking through the trail with us and become curious to what we were doing. We invited them in to help create our masterpiece and they were more than willing! I find it amazing how young children think the simplest things around can be the most fun and exciting things to play with and discover. Having this opportunity to create and explore brought me back to my own childhood, using flowers to create crowns and necklaces for myself and for my mother.

            There was a moment here were we all closed our eyes and just listened to what was around us. The sounds of the beach are my absolute favorite sounds to hear: the ocean waves, the breezy wind, the birds in the air. I become overwhelmed with the amount of activities I can create from being at the beach with my future students! Our professor read us a book by the boardwalk of the beach, called “Giving Thanks” which was a Native American message of giving thanks to every morning that comes. This book can make children realize what they are thankful for and the things they can start appreciating in life. After reading our group paired off and picked up trash around the beach. Little actions like this can make such huge differences in the protection of our environment and the species that live there. Of course a day at the beach would not be complete without actually jumping into the ocean so I did what I always do—jumped right in and enjoyed the cool salty water!

List of Flora Species:

Non-native plant: Australian Fur Tree

Sea grape Tree

Tall sea oats

Seaweed

Beach Cordgrass

List of Fauna Species:

Brown Pelican

Swallowtail butterfly

Brown anole

Barnacles

Jellyfish

Barracuda

Sea Turtle

Laughing Gull

 Beach Cordgrass

 Beach Dunes

 View to the Beach