This year for Earth Day, Big T celebrated our second annual Green Day festival. Despite the rainy weather, students spent quite a bit of time outdoors, as well as indoors with our activities combining fun and learning.
The Outdoor Education Center housed a few different activities. Mrs. Coalwell led a directional scavenger hunt, challenging students to be sure that they knew which way those Soggy Worms are that they are Never supposed to Eat. Next time your family is in the OEC, see if your students know that Devil’s Backbone lies to the East, Red Ridge to the West, Horsetooth Rock to the North, and the Big Thompson River to the South. Ms. Amber led most classes in a few rounds of Camouflage, emphasizing the predator/prey relationships (5th grade had an especially wet time slot and played Bat and Moth, experiencing a simulated echolocation tag game). Mr. Willy has been taking his art classes out all week for nature art inspired by Andy Goldsworthy, so those students were busy exploring the thicket for nature sculpture materials. Go take a stroll through the OEC to see these masterpieces!
Indoors, students made puppets out of trash, many with an Earth Day or “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” theme to them, and put on puppet shows as time allowed. They also were able to select “new to them” books from the stock they have been contributing to for a while. Some students planted flowers in reused newspaper pots and others made Earth Day bookmarks. The school district recently had an Omni Globe donated (made here in Loveland), so we brought that in as well. The Omni Globe is a very cool 3-D globe that projects maps and real-time weather patterns of the planet from the inside out (like a TV screen) to give us a better idea of what is happening on our planet.
Students also know that we try to do our part to conserve resources every day with our recycling program and our worm bins. We showcased these interesting features at our Worms, Dirt and More! community night on April 12th, with a demonstration of our lunchroom sorting session, tours of the Outdoor Ed Center, and lots of information about vermi-composting and viewings of our worm bins. We also invited many community partners to come share their programming and events with us. The Poudre Learning Center even brought river water with macro-invertebrates to identify!
If you are looking for nature or science camps for your students this summer, Ms. Amber has a full list of ones in the area in addition to the wonderful ones we’ll have right here at Big T! Check our blog (blogspot.bigtgreent.com) or email lamba@thompson.k12.co.us
(The week's Nature and Science Corner)
Friday, April 23, 2010
Friday, April 9, 2010
Big T Birds
With spring in the air, the birds at Big T are spending more time foraging, calling, and showing off to attract mates. We have some year-round residents, some on-and-off-again visitors, and some summer residents. The best place for bird watching around here is in Big T’s Outdoor Education Center on the other side of the Masonville Road.
The American Robin is one of the most common birds in North America. It is a fairly large songbird and can be recognized by its gray-brown upper body with an orange-red belly. Robins also have a darker head, with white patterning around the eye, and a mostly yellow beak. Their call is a melodious “Cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up.”
Bald Eagles have been spotted at Big T over the playground on occasion. Since bald eagles eat mainly fish, this is probably because the Big Thompson River is just on the other side of Highway 34. Bald eagles are one of the largest raptors (bird of prey) in North America, and the adults cannot be mistaken for any other bird, with their pure white head and tail against a dark body. Their call is harder to use to identify them, as it is a weak, high-pitched chirping, piping or whistling sound. The bold call you hear from eagles in the movies is actually the call of the red-tailed hawk, another one of our local raptors.
If you walk over to the Outdoor Education Center right now, before the leaves come out on the deciduous trees, you may see a hanging woven nest in a tree-top just east of the path. This nest is probably from last year’s Bullock’s Orioles. These birds nest here in the summer, and are bright orange with white wing-bars and a black throat patch and eye-line, and black along their backs. Listen for their interspersed chattering, chirping and whistling.
Keep your ears open all year round for the little Black-capped Chickadees, mostly creamy-gray birds with a dark black cap, white cheeks, and a black throat patch. They especially like our over-grown shrubs in the center of the Outdoor Education Center, and the taller evergreen trees. They make a high sing-song call of “Fee-bee-yee” or “Cheese-bur-ger” in addition to their buzzing call that gives them their name, “Chick-a-dee-dee-dee.”
More information on birds of all types can be found in The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America and on the Cornell Ornithology Lab’s website: www.allaboutbirds.org (this website is especially helpful to listen to bird calls, and look for birds by name or shape, as well as giving lots of information about how to identify birds).
Happy Bird-watching!
(The week's Nature and Science Corner)
The American Robin is one of the most common birds in North America. It is a fairly large songbird and can be recognized by its gray-brown upper body with an orange-red belly. Robins also have a darker head, with white patterning around the eye, and a mostly yellow beak. Their call is a melodious “Cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up.”
Bald Eagles have been spotted at Big T over the playground on occasion. Since bald eagles eat mainly fish, this is probably because the Big Thompson River is just on the other side of Highway 34. Bald eagles are one of the largest raptors (bird of prey) in North America, and the adults cannot be mistaken for any other bird, with their pure white head and tail against a dark body. Their call is harder to use to identify them, as it is a weak, high-pitched chirping, piping or whistling sound. The bold call you hear from eagles in the movies is actually the call of the red-tailed hawk, another one of our local raptors.
If you walk over to the Outdoor Education Center right now, before the leaves come out on the deciduous trees, you may see a hanging woven nest in a tree-top just east of the path. This nest is probably from last year’s Bullock’s Orioles. These birds nest here in the summer, and are bright orange with white wing-bars and a black throat patch and eye-line, and black along their backs. Listen for their interspersed chattering, chirping and whistling.
Keep your ears open all year round for the little Black-capped Chickadees, mostly creamy-gray birds with a dark black cap, white cheeks, and a black throat patch. They especially like our over-grown shrubs in the center of the Outdoor Education Center, and the taller evergreen trees. They make a high sing-song call of “Fee-bee-yee” or “Cheese-bur-ger” in addition to their buzzing call that gives them their name, “Chick-a-dee-dee-dee.”
More information on birds of all types can be found in The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America and on the Cornell Ornithology Lab’s website: www.allaboutbirds.org (this website is especially helpful to listen to bird calls, and look for birds by name or shape, as well as giving lots of information about how to identify birds).
Happy Bird-watching!
(The week's Nature and Science Corner)
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