Sussex Snow Cheetahs Learn about Water

On a February afternoon, the sun warmed the air, but left the dirt beneath the grass a tad damp. In a line along the path by the river, the Snow Cheetahs (a Sussex Kindergarten class) were asked what they thought they'd be learning on their field trip to the WEN office.
     "About the underground water thingy," one of them suggested. The watershed!
     Becca strode down the bank to the water's edge, performed a couple tricky contortions to reach her hand into the water without falling in, and lifted up a pile of leaves tied together with a red ribbon. This was one of the students' leaf packs, carefully assembled and weighed two months before to measure how much the macro-invertebrates were eating.
     "They're almost gone!" one of the girls exclaimed.
     A fallen log lay across the bank near their leaf packs. Some gouge marks were gnawed into its surface. "What are these?" Becca asked. Several kids mumbled hesitantly and then confidently about beavers, excited by Becca's confirmation: "They're beaver marks!"

After checking on their leaf packs, we all gathered in a circle on the grass outside the Swift Building. We warmed up for the lesson with a water cycle song. One of the boys sat next to me, holding my hand tightly, which made it difficult to act out the song's gestures. At each step of the cycle mentioned in the song, the students yelled "STOP!" Then Becca paused the song to explore the new concept.
     "Does anyone know what evaporation is?" Several hands shot up. One boy explained, "It's when water goes up. You might think water can only go down but it can go up."
      Another boy considered a scenario. Evaporation happens "when a puddle gets hot." On that note, Becca gave the example of steam coming off boiling water when you make spaghetti. The Snow Cheetahs agreed they'd made spaghetti before and liked it. Halfway through the song, the child ended up in my lap.
     When the song finished the Snow Cheetahs got out their journals so they could draw what they thought the watershed looked like. Many drew rivers flowing under the soil.
     "I'm going to draw it going to somebody's house," said one boy, presumably thinking of a well or plumbing with access to the watershed.

 

Sadly, I had to leave to attend my own class at this point, so I did not get to watch the Snow Cheetahs act as water droplets in the cycle, going from station to station, mimicking how water moves from rivers to clouds to the ocean to animals. After this game they filed (well, "filed" is perhaps too orderly a word) into the Swift building and up the stairs to the WEN office to watch Becca demonstrate how the watershed works with our flow model. I can only imagine they found this exciting.

The Snow Cheetahs' teacher sent us these two pictures from the field trip:

-Cassie Sevigny
WEN Intern

Bitterroot River Field Trip

Last week, WEN had a great time leading students from C.S. Porter to the Bitterroot River. We taught them all about the biological, physical, and chemical aspects of their nearby river. Take a look at the day through this video courtesy of Clinton Begley!

Miller Creek Field Trip

 Ever wonder what it is like to be at the river with WEN? Now you can feel like you are at the river's edge with us by watching this great video by WEN's AmeriCorps member Clinton Begley.

Miller Creek Field Trip

Discovering a Treasure with Swan Valley School

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

This late September morning we were very excited to take Swan Valley School out to Glacier Creek. The morning started bright and early for the long drive out, and we could tell it was going to be a great morning. Maddie, Josh, and I were very excited not only for the scenic drive ahead (which I later loved, especially passing Salmon Lake), but to be with the kids at such a great location. I have to say, once we reached the dirt road that extended deeper into the forest, I was getting quite excited.

After an almost two-hour drive, we arrived at the stream, parking beside an old rusty bridge, with the river flowing swiftly below. At first, I was a little worried when few students showed up in jackets, but the weather turned out to be just perfect, it wasn’t hot or cold, and the sun was there keeping everyone chipper and toasty. The kids were unbelievably great, very eager to learn and participate. The groups at each of the stations were a mixture of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders and they worked so well together—the older students took on leadership roles, helping the younger students and I think it was really beneficial for the group as a whole.

It was my first time running the physical station and it was a lot of fun! It was really helpful to have both, Maddie and myself, keeping the students interactive and listening at each end of the velocity station. The kids had a blast throwing the sticks in the water, and I’m pretty sure it was starting to turn into a competition of who could throw the hardest and farthest. Once all of our data was collected, the high number of positive indicating insects collected, combined with our high oxygen content and pristine clear, cold water, we knew Glacier Creek was a promising supply to the Swan River.

The trip ended at the school, where Josh gave a wonderful presentation to the 4th grade classroom about what makes a healthy stream, including what types of conditions are ideal for our native trout populations. The students were then allowed to ask questions, and the only question was directed toward Josh, asking, “do you like healthy foods?” Confused, Josh replied with a “yes” and the student told him, “because Lunchables are 100% healthy!” The students then filed out of the room to the cafeteria, where they would be treated to their much anticipated lunch after a long morning as watershed scientists.


—Megan Girsch
WEN Fall UM Intern
Wildlife Biology

Adventures with C.S. Porter Middle School

Hello Everybody!
We had a great turnout at our C.S. Porter field trip this past Tuesday. Attending the trip was Tom, Garreth, Maddie, Stephannie, Josh, David, and myself. Our usual biological, chemical, and physical stations were set up for the kids to explore, and for the first time we were able to have a fourth station: invasive plants (many thanks to Stephannie).

Nearly every sixth-grader was talking and laughing as they approached the Bitterroot River early Tuesday—I could certainly tell they were eager to begin their morning as WEN’s very own scientists. I ran the chemistry station with Garreth, and we had a lot of fun working with the kids, watching them jump around and shake up their water samples. The best part about working at the chemistry station was listening to the responses to, “what is pH?”—needless to say, they discovered that it was not some sort of health issue or disease and it does not stand for doctor. It was really rewarding at the end to listen to the kids tell us what they learned and liked about the trip, especially when I heard, “I liked learning about pH,” and “pH from zero to seven is acid-ic.”

The children had a really great time at every station—the first thing we heard from the group that came to us from the plant station was endless bragging about how far they could spit seeds; the kids that had yet to go to the bug station anxiously eyed the lucky ones trampling around in the water nearby, and those from the physical station were thrilled to have spent their time with Josh, saying how fun we was (they probably just liked the Swedish Fish he gave them as a treat!). Not only did I have fun participating in the field trip, but I was also proud to have taken part in something so great. The amount of detailed information the kids learned and could explain to us at the end of the trip was extremely impressive. As soon as I got back to the office I signed up for another trip the following week, with no doubt about it! I strongly encourage others to do the same, you won’t regret it.

--Megan Girsch
WEN Intern

Swan Valley and Salmon Prarie Schools field trips!

I could tell as I slid out of bed the morning of the 27th that my body was not used to getting up at 6:00. I hurried to get ready and by some magic made it to the office by 6:30, the appointed meeting time for an all day Swan Valley/ Salmon Prarie field trip. Once there I met with our two awesome volunteers Chrissy Orangio and John Hughes and after "borrowing" our VISTA Emilie's lunch we were off! It is a field trip I have been wanting to take for a while and despite the sagging eyelids I was excited. After a sleepy trip, we finally arrived at the beautiful wilderness and Swan Valley School. This was my first meeting with one of our biggest supporters, Diann Erickson who works for the Swan Ecosystems Center, and it was was every bit as motivating as I thought it would be. (This is her above picking through gunk trying to find Macroinvertebrates.) Despite the time she was up and excited about our upcoming field trip. Leading us into the small, quaint one-floor school, Diann talked us over the plan for the day and showed us an amazing display she had put together using pictures and data from the past 7 years of data we have collected with the school.We then went in to talk to the K-1st group, preparing them for the upcoming field trip. Despite their young age, they all remembered working with us in the fall and/or in previous years. Patiently they listened and answered questions.

Before we knew it we were down by the river, which was flowing very quickly, and starting with the field trip. I was leading the physical station and I had to admit, I was a bit rusty. In the moments as the kids were coming down I went over what I wanted to talk about in my head: Cloud cover, flood plain, shape of the channel, velocity, how does the areal around the stream affect it? What affects velocity? What parts of the river move faster or slower? Soon I had a group of wonderful, cooperative kids. Each took his or her turn to throw a stick, the shouters would shout start and stop as they stood on either side of a 20ft line, the timers would time, and the recorder would record, then the thrower would go trade places with someone who had a different job. We all had a lot of fun and the kids learned quite a bit.

After we finished up with that field trip we went to lunch at the local Mercantile and then Diann met us with a homeschooler she had picked up to come on our next field trip. We all drove to a small, but well-kept one-room school house entitled Salmon Prairie School. It's sole student was our other field trip attendee. We all went down to a beautiful swift flowing river that I was told was home to many Bull Trout! The two students we were working with were older and well familiar with our field trips. They knew the protocol and were basically able to run the stations by themselves. We all had fun collecting 300 bugs and participating in all the stations rather than teaching.At the end of the field trip I realized how important our work was. Without us, those kids would have been in the class all day and may not have ever learned about the beautiful rivers that surround them! We got to give them hands on science experience and re-enforced watershed ecology and science concepts year after year. I know I wish I had such an opportunity in school. Chrissy and John felt the importance of what we had done too, and on the ride home we all felt satisfied.

Caution: WEN Field Trips could make you a morning person

April 8th, 2010 Sentinel High School Field Trip at the Clark Fork

From the 6:45a pick up, to loading equipment, to the essential coffee stop, to scoping out the monitoring site, to site set up, I finally realized what a beautiful morning it was sitting on a log pulling off my waders. The light pink tinged clouds, the bustle of the Clark Fork, Canada geese flying over caused an emotion to well up inside me: ‘I’m at the river and it’s a good day to be alive.’ This field trip was a little different than the others I’ve done in the past. Because of time restraints, we primarily demo’ed how to run the water quality tests instead of letting the students do them. This way we were able to focus on the main scientific ideas of water quality testing and downplay the step by step instructions of conducting the tests. In addition to dissolved oxygen, we showed students how to test for nitrates and phosphates and more importantly, why we test and what would cause detectable traces of the substances to be there. Eutrophication was one of the main ideas in the lesson. Having done some undergraduate research on aquatic plant cover in a stream recovering from eutrophication, I have a vested interest in the subject. The site I studied during my undergraduate was a spring fed calcium carbonate stream recovering from point source pollution. As a student, eutrophication can be a tricky concept to understand. When students are asked about contributors of dissolved oxygen, plants are a common guess, so it is essential to clarify the overall effects. Aside from the outcome eutrophication has on DO levels, I like to mention the effect it has of lowering aquatic plant diversity. Massive algal blooms set off a competition for sunlight that shut out submergent plants. This was evident in the research I did as watercress (an emergent plant) and filamentous algae dominated the stream before recovery.

WEN volunteer Taylor Wilcox joined us for the second half of the field trip to lead the chem station. As the second group of students filed down to the river, the clouds began to darken and the wind kicked up. Before we could get through our second station, the sky opened up on us with a nice dose of cold rain, when it noticed that we weren’t budging, it changed to graupel-like snow, then gave up and went back to rain. The students maintained a level of enthusiasm, but we were all more than glad to finish and get out of the cold.

Emilie Kohler is an AmeriCorps*VISTA Development Assistant for Watershed Education Network. She has been working with WEN since July 2009.