The Ecology Club will meet on the following Tuesdays, 3:10 – 4:15 p.m., in Room A10.

February and March found our club indoors for the most part, learning about the environment. We talked about our watershed and the health of our streams. Some of us counted birds for the Great American Backyard Bird Count, which helps the Audobon Society keep track of the migration of birds. This is important because their migratory pattern is a good indicator of our ever-changing environment. Since April is Environmental Month, we spent time in the computer lab gathering information to share with our first grade friends to teach them some of the things we have learned.

We have taken several walks to a nearby pond where we found a beaver dam! At our last meeting we took the camera and got some great pictures of the dam, as well as some of the trees our busy beaver has been working on. We also found two snapping turtles. We saw bullfrog tadpoles in the pond, so we will check back on them a little later this month. We took a picture of some wildflowers growing, and although you cannot see them in the pictures, we saw four deer. All in all, it was a very exciting walk, and we had beautiful weather!

Today we went on a long nature walk along one of our public paths. We saw a red and black salamander underneath a log. We found different kinds of leaves and identified them. We saw fish in the creek, and we picked up a lot of trash along the way.

The Ecology Club plans to help set a Guiness World Record! National Geographic for Kids wants our help to create the World’s Longest Chain of Shoes. You will learn more about this with a flyer coming to your classroom soon. Rockwell will collect old tennis shoes and we will create our own shoe chain. Then we will send our old shoes in to join those collected by other schools. Once the shoe chain is formed and measured, the shoes will be sent to Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program, where they will be recycled into basketball and tennis courts, soccer fields, and running tracks. Our old shoes will help set a record, keep trash out of landfills, and build places for kids to play!

We planted mums and picked up trash in front of the school. We learned that mulch helps keep moisture in the ground and blocks weeds naturally.

We talked about trash and other things harmful to our environment. We learned how to cut apart six-pack soda can rings. If a young animal gets a plastic bag or ring stuck around its neck, it could choke to death.

Ecology Shoe Chain Photo Album

Nature Walk Album

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