We had a lot of different things going on last week at EcoRaiders. The younger members worked on mini herb gardens. We made the "planters" out of repurposed wood from the plexiglass window frame that was on the sign at the front of the school. Cans of beans served as the containers for planting the herbs. The mini herb planters will be sold at our Eco-handmade market which will be before the Winter holidays. The older boys worked with Ms. Sabena on creating the frames for covering the winter vegetables we planted last week in the raised flower beds. They created a frame using rebar and PVC pipes which will be used with a sheet of plastic over it. The 4th-6th grade girls were busy decorating their new, recycled notebooks and researching their own environmental action projects. More about this to come. To wrap up the session, Club members watched a short clip from "Trash Me", a project dedicated to raising awareness of how much trash the average American generates. Rob Greenfield is set out to wear a plastic suit filled with trash, adding piece after piece that he generates, for 30 days. You can learn more about this very unique project here: http://robgreenfield.tv/trashme/.
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It's amazing how much you can get done in one hour with the help of 35 kids and a handful of dedicated adults. This week we tackled the much overgrown, raised plant beds at school. At the end of our EcoRaiders Club session, we had cleaned them from all weeds and planted row after row of winter vegetables. The weeding was hard work, specially because of how hot it was, but it was also rewarding. In one of the beds, the kids found dozens of potatoes and some carrots and onions that last year's 2nd graders had planted, which was very exciting. Everyone took home a couple of potatoes and micro-carrots for dinner. AppState nutrition students Jenny and Ginny led the planting efforts. They had students planting kale, lettuce of different types, mustard, broccoli, rhubarb, kale, garlic and cauliflower. We learned things like how far apart to place the different plants and that you can just plop a clove of garlic in the ground to grow a garlic plant. Some of the older girls painted wooden sticks and we used them to mark the plants so the kids can learn what is what. Check out the picture gallery for the planting fun on an amazing Fall day. Thanks to Amy Sheffey and Angela for bringing tons of fresh oranges and tortilla chips for our snack. The kids really enjoyed it. We now have ten bluebird boxes up around the school campus! A huge thanks to Dr. Lynn Siefferman, ornithologist from AppState's Department of Biology who came to teach us about local birds last week, for putting together the boxes and bringing them over to Cove Creek for the kids to paint. She donated the boxes and not only helped with the painting, but also stayed after the session and hang all the bird boxes up.
Each team of students painted a bird box. They are numbered so that we can monitor bird activity and keep track of it using this collaborative spreadsheet. You can see the location of the boxes on the map below. Make sure to check them out next time you're in school, the kids are very proud of them. A shout out to Casey Tester, Olivia's mom, for bringing delicious clementines and juice for snack, and Melanie Hollis for helping out with the painting. As well as our usual Nature Team members Angela, Sabene and Amy. That was one messy painting ordeal! But well worth it as you can see in the pictures of the finished products below... I have recently interacted with Cove Creek School students quite a bit during snack and meals (lunch duty, field trips, school visits, EcoRaiders club) and I have noticed that a large majority of our students are lacking basic knowledge of recycling. They don't understand what materials can be recycled and often have bottles or cans mixed in with their uneaten food in their brown lunch bags and just dump the whole thing in the trash.
In preparation for our recycling campaign, which we will start when the weather turns colder and rainier, I visited the Watauga County Recycling Center last week. Ms. Heather Bowen was extremely helpful and informative, and provided me with some amazing recycling education posters, stickers, pencils, buttons and labels for our recycling containers. The EcoRaiders will be setting up two recycling centers to add to those around the school: one will be in the cafeteria, and the other by the outside picnic shelter. More to come! American robin, common grackle, American crow, American goldfinch, dark-eyed junco, song sparrow, Carolina chickadee, tufted titmouse, northern cardinal, eastern towhee, northern cardinal, eastern bluebird and pilated woodpecker... are some of the more common birds we might see around the Cove Creek area. Last week we were fortunate enough to host Dr. Lynn Siefferman during our EcoRaiders meeting. Dr. Siefferman is an ornithologist from Appalachian State University who is an expert on eastern bluebirds. Her research looks at how the magnificent blue and orange coloration of this species of bird evolved. Her work in conservation biology also takes her into streams, where she studies freshwater mussels! Dr. Siefferman taught the EcoRaiders about the most common species of birds in the area, she showed the different tools she uses to handle and tag birds, explained what to do if they find a nest, injured bird or fledgling, and why conservation of bird species is so important. She answered all the EcoRaiders' questions and listened to their exciting anecdotes about family members' encounters with birds. She even had them chirping away trying to imitate songs of different birds. It was a fun and very informative session. The students have been organized into smaller groups (with names of birds as their team names) and will work with their teammates on several projects in the next few weeks. Dr. Siefferman has put together some bluebird boxes that the EcoRaiders will paint and we will put around the school grounds. We are looking forward to learning more about birds through bird watching and monitoring their activity patterns. If you want to see some pictures of local birds we're studying, check out these "picture cards" we put together. Thank you to all the parents who continue to be an active part of the club through volunteering during sessions, bringing snacks, or simply by adjusting to a later pick up and encouraging their kids to be in the club. It's been a great ride so far! This week we were joined by Austin Thomas, another graduate student in the Biology Department at AppState. He loves botany and he wanted to share his passion with the EcoRaiders. He taught them how to identify trees by looking at their leaf shapes and introduced them to how to use a dichotomous key. We are really grateful for experts like Austin taking the time to create age appropriate resources and leading the kids in nature activities. It's awesome to be team up like this! The tree cards we used and the dichotomous key are both available for download by clicking on the links. Some of the trees we identified out in our backyard: Tulip Tree, Bitternut Hickory, Sugar Maple, Shagbark Hickory, Flowering Dogwood, Yellow Buckeye, American Beech, Musclewood, Black Locust, Pin Cherry, Schumard's Oak, Red Oak, American Basswood. Next time you're around the school, check out the hiking trail out back and see how many trees you and your kids can identify! In the Spring we will be doing more work on the trail and the EcoRaiders will be making permanent signs for the trees. Thanks to the Vitale family for helping out with the snacks this week! The EcoRaiders have been busy these first two weeks since the inauguration of the club! Last week we made wildlife habitats along two walls of the school, where there was previously just very dry, bare earth and a bunch rocks. Spotted already using the habitats: bumble bees, butterflies, leaf insects, birds and a salamander. Over the weekend several families help with an impromptu creek clean up. Check out the pictures in the Photo Gallery. There were people cutting down big trees that had fallen on the creek during the last storm, removing big branches along the trail and picking up lots of trash. The hiking trail behind the school is already looking much better and we're excited to partner up with ASU's Trail Crew in the Spring to do some more work refurbishing the trail and making some new footbridges. Rob Plummer fixed the old bridge that is still in place over the creek and replaced some of the broken boards so that people can use the trail until we put in new bridges. Thanks Rob and everyone else who helped with the creek clean up. During this week's regular EcoRaiders Club session, we focused on salamanders. Watauga county is one of the regions in NC with the highest diversity salamander diversity, with 21 known species. North Carolina itself, boasting 60 species, is the state with the most salamander species in the country. Herpetologist Monica Winebarger from AppState was our guest speaker and lead the salamander searches, and Mallory James, a Biology undergrad also from App who is helping out with the club this year, ran the station about salamander morphology. We also had parent helpers Angela McMann and Sabena Maiden running art and science stations. Students learned about what makes a salamander a salamander, the different species that they are likely to come across in their school's backyard, proper handling of specimens and the ecological niche salamanders occupy. We also had some fantastic salamander artwork! Species of salamanders seen in the creek so far this year by EcoRaiders: Seal Salamander, Blue Ridge Two-lined, Black-bellied, Blue Ridge Mountain Husky and Shovel Nosed. For more pictures, check out the salamander study album in the Photo Gallery. A HUGE thanks to Madelyn's "Nana" Linda for replenishing our supply of acrylic paints! We love to integrate art into our science studies. Next week we will be focusing on tree identification. The first day of EcoRaiders was a flurry of chaos but a total success. We had a group of 32 kids eager to get started who worked non-stop in order to turn two desert-like areas alongside the wall of the school, into two beautiful wildlife habitats. The project was completely student ran. They were told what the goal was and students picked their projects and ran with it. Our objective was to provide an area with water, shelter and food for wildlife such as birds, toads and insects. We got native wildflowers from the ASU Biology Greenhouse to attract pollinators; rocks, bark, flower pots and such for shelter; and birdbaths and bee fountains to provide water. We even made a bat house in the hopes to provide a place for bats to roost and raise their young too. As soon as we finished, there were already butterflies around checking out their new hang out! Thank you to our amazing parent helpers: Sabena Maiden, Carla Parker and Angela McMann, and our ASU interns Ginny and Jenny, and to everyone who donated money for club materials so far! We have $130 that will be put into future projects. A great start to EcoRaiders 2016-2017. Check out the pictures from Day 1 below: I'm excited to introduce our Club student intern: Mallory James. Mallory is a senior studying environmental, evolutionary and ecological biology at Appalachian State University. She's from Butner, NC and currently serves as a Resident Assistant at App. If that's not enough, she also has an intern position at Grandfather Mountain. Mallory will be sharing her passion for environmental education with our students and helping with EcoRaiders every other Tuesday. In addition to her work at Grandfather Mountain, Mallory has also interned at Houston Zoo as part of the Collegiate Conservation Program. During her time there she focused on prairie conservation and the protection of endangered species such as the prairie conservation (eg. studying endangered species such as the Attwater prairie chicken, on which red ants prey when they are baby chicks). Mallory also helped create artificial reefs in the bay (using clams shells to build the structures). Last year she was also involved in biology outreach in elementary school classrooms. This semester Mallory is taking, among other courses, Evolutionary History, Biology of Aging, Climate Change and Herpetology. Thanks for taking the time to help us out as well Mallory! We can't wait to learn from you. The EcoRaiders club start is set for Tuesday September 13th! Sign up forms will be going out to parents the first week of school and we are solidifying some visitors and activities for September. While the weather is still nice we want to get the school garden set up and start clearing some of the old hiking trails behind the school. The trails will eventually include nature signs and the club will design interactive science activities around them. I will be at school on Tuesday, August 30th at 2:30pm to answer any questions about the club. If you're a parent or teacher interested in being involved with the club in any capacity, please contact me at [email protected]. -Marta |
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