Fifth grade service learning

By DNDA Admin | September 26, 2008

Today we had a very fervent group of fifth graders come out from Tilden Elementary. As we started our hike in, we stopped a little ways in to talk to our young guests about producers, consumers, and decomposers. They became engaged with an activity which displayed a food web and the importance of the functions that each group (producers, consumers, and decomposers) held.

As we walked further down the trail, buphalo enlightened our elementary pupils with a definition of a watershed using them as examples to engross.

A watershed is an area of land that catches rain and snow and drains or seeps into a marsh, stream, river, lake or groundwater.

After a snack and a break we continued to hike into the lower Soundway property stopping along the way to talk about root balls and compost. At lunch the group hiked up through the greenbelt to the Riverview Playfield at 12th and Myrtle to have lunch and endulge in entertainment hosted by the Yellow Hat Band (9-piece brass band).

As the familiar tunes of the beautiful brass band played, the kids participated in a communal can-can

and amused with flips and tango, we danced our lunch away!

We wrapped up lunch and thanked the band, our group tracked back down to the 14th and Holly site where we picked up sheet mulching. These ever so young and energetic people sheet mulched 550 sq.ft. in 30 minutes. The kids were finding alternate ways to fill buckets, starting mulch buisnesses, writing songs about mulch, keeping communication very open and organizing themselves to have some people for running buckets back and forth dumping, some for filling, a few on cardboard, and some for distributing the empty buckets.

We rested for water and took our last hike up to the trail head. While preparing for the next lesson, one of the teachers spotted a garter snake. buphalo wrestled around with it and managed to capture it which resulted in another opportunity to teach something hands-on. All the kids of course wanted to touch it!

Some kids found their own creatures to play with, like this caterpillar, which tied to the teaching of the word “metamorphasis,” the process in which caterpillars become butterflies. We then partook in a listening activity related to a lesson about our five senses. The kids recieved small black film containers filled with an object that made a unique sound. They then had to use that sound to find the other person with the same exact sound in their canister.
We wrapped up with distribution of stickers and buttons and sent them on their way to use all the information we chalked them full of. It was all in all a very educational day!

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