Sean's Eagle Scout Project

Donations

If you would like to donate to Sean McDonald's Eagle Scout project to benefit the Austin Bat Cave, please use the PayPal donate button below. Sean is looking to raise about $500 for this project, and any funds he receives in excess of what is used for the project will be given to Austin Bat Cave.

If you would rather mail payment to Sean, you can do so at:

Sean McDonald
(Eagle Scout Project)
9301 Donner Ln
Austin, TX 78749

The Project

My eagle project will be about helping students with sensory writing. I will be building a lesson plan that will use tools that we build to prompt students to do sensory writing. This will be for the benefit of Austin Bat Cave, a non-profit writing tutoring organization.  I will design these things, and then pass them on to Austin Bat Cave, which they will use from then on.  Austin Bat Cave is located at 1807 West 11th Street, Austin, Texas, 78703

This is on the front page of their website:  

Austin Bat Cave is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that provides children and teenagers (ages 6-18) with opportunities to develop their creative and expository writing skills. We connect a diverse population of young writers and learners with a vibrant community of adult volunteers in Austin. All of our programs are free. 

One reason I am passionate about this project is because Austin Bat Cave helped me as a writer. I have visited a couple of their workshops, and they helped my with my writing, so now I have the chance to give back to them. The representative from Austin Bat Cave is Manuel Gonzales. When we met, I had the original idea of building an outdoor classroom.  But when he mentioned sensory boxes, we both built on that idea until we had the current idea for my project. ABC specializes on teaching kids in creative writing.  They travel to schools and have a separate office in central Austin.

A group of scouts and I will be developing a lesson plan to use sensory boxes which we will build based off of our designs. We will be working with Manuel Gonzales, the representative from Austin Bat Cave. One of the important aspects about the project would be that all the objects in the boxes would have something to do with nature and the natural world.  This is important to me because it ties into Boy Scouts and out outdoor program.  Sensory boxes would be a box where you focus on one of the five senses to interact with an object. For example, you might have a box with a hole cut in it, where you can put your hand through and feel what’s inside, but you can’t see what is in it. Another would be where you can only see a sliver of an object, and not know what the whole object is. The best part about these boxes would be the fact that you can go anywhere and put almost anything in these boxes, so that you could have many different lessons.

 

You could build these boxes out of wood or possibly cardboard, and have a locked top, so you could put something large in the box. For some of them, you could have an object loose in there, but for others, like sight, you would need to have the object locked into place so that it is exactly where you want it. I found three possible boxes and their prices at Michael’s. A Medium plain box for $14.99, a box the looks like a book for $3.99, and a medium trunk/chest box for $19.99.  These boxes could be modified and painted for our purposes.  But buying boxes is an option, as is making them ourselves, the project helpers and I will decide on that.

The lesson plan would be that you would write about how you felt about what you touched or saw or smelled etc., or you could draw about it. This would teach the kids about imagery and sensory writing, but they would just think about having fun. After we have all the boxes built, and the lesson plan is finished, I will teach the scouts how to use them. Then I would have the scouts teach the people at Austin Bat Cave. I would lead the first workshop, and then pass it to the Austin Bat Cave People.  At the end, we will have given Austin Bat Cave a useful tool that they can use to help teach kids about writing.