OUR WATER STUDY...

"By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, 'There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.' But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was Too Late."

          Quotation brought to us via Orrin, by way of Winnie-The-Pooh a.k.a. A.A.Milne

All year we have been learning about water.

 

The City of Boulder has a wonderful Water Quality Education Program designed to help kids  understand how important it is to take care of this limited resource.  With the support of the Boulder Valley Foundation for Education, Holly Cunningham took us on a year-long water study.  Her grant incorporated literature, science, social action, and lots of field trips.  We want to thank her and everyone who made this study possible.

 

Holly, a laughing river, enjoys when we give our beautiful water quilt to Tammi.

Tammi, laughing right back, accepts our gift and enjoys knowing what she has given us during the project.

 

On the last day of the Water Study, we released the two salamanders we had raised. Chelsea and Al had eaten their "Last Supper" of crickets back at school, so we had a good feeling that they wouldn't get hungry as they adjusted to life in the rough.     At first they crawled away from the water, right into the crowd of kids watching along the stream bank; but then, with a bit of help from their friends, they wriggled into the creek and swam away.

 

Regular cleanup at  the creek is like weeding your garden. As long as there is life, there will be weeds and trash and all the things that go with people. So people must cleanup!

 

A different part of our water study focused on periwinkle snails and their behavior related to the movement of tides. We observed how they responded to changes in amounts of water in our graduated cylinders. Nature makes a lot of sense, you know.

 

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