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)
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