Every quarter or so we go with our homeschool group to a local lake and perform an Aquatic Field Study. We've done it for several years now and the kids really enjoy it. It's also neat to see how the area changes. We go to a section of Martinez Lake in the Imperial Wildlife Refuge called "Meer's Point". 
Lots of birds to be seen (especially coots yesterday), and not many other people around. We saw an osprey, a cormorant, an egret, several grackles (obnoxious crow-like birds) and a seagull. The grackles even got into our snack bag of homemade donuts...the buggers. Have you ever seen such a coot butt?? haha!
So, an aquatic field study involves observing both biotic and abiotic characteristics of the area. The kids record what animals they see, what kind of plant life is around, what the weather is like, and take measurements of water clarity, dissolved oxygen levels, water pH and water temperature. It's quite a process.
The long tube that Ryan is looking into is a device to measure water clarity, known as a Secchi Disk.
In this last picture the kids are checking out all the little critters they can find in the water samples they collected.Our homeschool group consists of about 12 kids that range in age from 4 to 13. It's a great group of kids, and they are really wonderful about helping out the little ones.
2 comments:
What do you mean every quarter or so? Nothing like "blogspot written pressure" to make sure we actually start doing these things more frequently again, huh? Page looks great. You and Tina might have to drag the rest of us into the 21st century so we can all share our family treasures.
Haha...no pressure intended.
Although the rest of you should get off your collective duffs and share YOUR goofy stories! =P
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