Panoramic View from our Base Camp.
We got an opportunity to go naturemapping so I volunteered our 8th graders since they’re all learning Life Science this year! An amazing AmeriCorps Volunteer, the one who taught my 8th graders last year about Rain Gardens, organized the whole trip for us! We were very fortunate indeed.
We took over 70 kids on a quick almost mile hike over to an area known as Tamanowas Rock (AKA Big Rock to those of who live here). In the following video you can see where in WA State this area is (including where you can find the Tamanowas – or Big – Rock).
Our goal for the day was to break the kids up into groups (you can almost see where we sent each of the five groups on the video above but it kind of got cut off at the end so stops abruptly). Each group would then either draw or identify or take photos of all the living things, or evidence of living things like tracks and scat, in their area. We would then input that data into the Project Noah database. Well, that was the plan. Only problem is that we picked the first day that our short dry spell chose to end. It rained on us for almost the entire time we were there so we ended up cutting our trip short.
Here is a shot showing the dead end road that we took to walk to our base camp.
Here’s a group getting ready to go off trail. We do a lot of hiking in Chimacum Middle School what with our Cispus trip for 6th graders and our Odyssey trip for 8th graders and this is the first time we’ve ever had kids go off trail!
Here are some kids, during one of our drier moments, trying to figure out what all the flora around them was.
Even with our trip cut short we still managed to collect some pictures of mostly flora with a few clues about the fauna (there are also some shots a student took of Tamanowas Rock).
Carrie, the AmeriCorps Volunteer, had sent us some Naturemapping Resources that we used to get ready for our field trip. I also shared the WA Naturemapping Program website with my students in preparation. Once we were back in class with photos that I and students took, I found the following plant, mushroom and tree online identification sites to help us identify some of what we found.
So even with the rain and having to cut our trip short we still managed to do some real field science, we identified some flora and fauna, and a few students uploaded the photos and some description to the Project Noah database doing our small part of citizen science. We’re lucky to have nature in our backyard.
