Riverbend trip

Friday was our last field trip, which was to Riverbend Environmental Center. Riverbend sits at the Western edge of "Conshohocken Curve" above the Schuylkill River. Saw Mill Run is the stream that runs along the edge of the center. From the parking lot you cross the stream and climb a hill to a big red barn that smells of old pine. Inside, terrariums filled with turtles, snakes, and insects line the walls. We gathered there for a short introduction before being split into two groups to rotate throughout the activities.

We climbed farther up the steep hill to the ridge where Riverbend's "Lenape Camp" is found. The Lenape Indians once used the land around Riverbend as a summer camp due to its ideal fishing site along the river and its wealth of forest plants and animals. Our group started with "Gifts of a Deer". Guide Vanessa, told us the Lenape never wasted a single part of the deer they hunted, for its life was a great gift to the Indians. She passed around various deer bones and asked us to guess the part and what it might have been used for. The items included  a scapula, a lower jaw bone with molars, an antler, a furry tail hide, and a foreleg. Then she shared some tools made from each of the parts. The flat triangular scapula was lashed to a tree branch to be used as a hoe, and the antler was lashed to another branch for use as a rake. The molars on the jaw bone would have been used to husk corn kernels. The soft fur had many uses for clothing and comfort. The foreleg may have been used as a tool handle, but more importantly, the sinew from the tendons was used as a strong thread or rope for connecting and lashing tool parts.

We then moved on to "Gardening and Foraging". Vanessa said the Lenape did not do a lot of agriculture because they travelled from camp to camp following the seasons. However, they did plant "the three sisters": corn, squash, and beans for their complementary nutrients and their multiple uses as food and tools. She told us "foraging" meant searching and finding food from nature, and explained how the Lenape found many medicinal and edible plants in the forest. In a grove, Vanessa sent the children out to find various plants, each labeled with a card showing pictures of full growth and an explanation of use. It was interesting to see how the students scanned for content rather than read the entire description, but their scanning did not always provide them sufficient information.

Next we experienced "Home and Hearth", consisting of a child-size model of a Lenape longhouse covered in reed mats, a fire ring and tripod. The children trooped inside the longhouse and sat on furs and reed mats.

Vanessa showed many items typical of Lenape life, including soft leather loincloths,skirts, and shirts, embroidered moccasins, corn husk dolls, a baby doll on a cradle board, and various musical instruments. The children got to handle and try out all of the items. (unfortunately our first, originally working video camera froze up at this point!)

Moving on we learned about "Hunting and Fishing". We had already learned deer were one of the animals hunted by the Lenape, but Vanessa showed us the furs of many other animals of the forest, including bear, beaver, coyote, squirrel, fox, and rabbit (the softest!). She also showed us a picture of the Lenape's favorite fish to catch: a 12 foot long sturgeon that could feed an entire village for days. Sturgeon are no longer swimming in the Schuylkill, nearly fished to extinction and forced from their habitat, but some still swim in the Delaware (As my husband who works on the Delaware Riverside can attest!).



that's how long  a sturgeon was

 We concluded our Lenape lesson and went back to the barn for lunch. Afterward we switched guides and began our afternoon lesson on watersheds and healthy streams. Roxanne brought us out to see a working model of a watershed, which included a ridge, slope, tributary, and river, as well as community features such as farms, houses, and factories.

To explain a watershed she had two children stand beside each other with their hands meeting in a "V". The heads of "Mount Daniella and Mount Angelica" became the ridges, and their arms sloped down into a valley with a stream rushing between them. A watershed or drainage basin collects all the rainwater that falls between the two ridges. Gathered around the model, Roxanne talked about some of the pollutants that occur within a watershed. She used chocolate sprinkles to represent animal droppings on farms and in pet-owners yards, sea salt to represent our salted winter roads, green water to represent oil and antifreeze leakage that occurs on our roads from our cars, pink water to represent chemicals used as pesticides, herbicides, and factory chemical waste, and cocoa powder to represent loose dirt in fields and deforested land. Once the model was "polluted", each of the children had a chance to make it "rain" with a water spray bottle over the watershed model. Very quickly we heard cries of "Oh no!!!" and "Ewww!" as the rain water dripped down the slope washing all of the pollutants into the river in a brown icky mess.

Roxanne then asked us to think of ways we could prevent pollutants from entering our watersheds. I told the students we would be making our own river model in the near future and that they should observe some of the features that they might want to include in their own.

since the videocam failed, I whipped out my sketchbook and watercolors

It was time to try our next station, which looked at the health of streams based on the aquatic and insect life that could be found in a water sample. We split into three groups and were provided a poster showing three levels of stream health with pictures of animals found in each as well as a set of laminated insect cards to sort and match on the poster. Group 1 streams have no pollution and are in green sites like parks and wilderness with lots of trees, falling leaves that provide nutrients, shady banks that keep the water cool, and strong root systems along banks to prevent erosion. Group 2 streams have a fair amount of pollution and are in yellow sites like farmland or suburbia that have deforested land, warmer water temperatures, and fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticide runoff. Group 3 streams have a lot of pollution and are in blue sites like cities with no plantlife along concrete riverbanks, many buildings, and factory, trash, and oil runoff.

Our final station was a search for macroinvertebrates in the actual stream. Armed with small cups and instructions to turn over rocks in the water, the kids examined the stream. Unfortunately, we found very little, but were told that was because it was getting too cold out for insects and the rain the night before had washed much of the insect life downstream.

This was a remarkable hands-on experience for our third-graders. There was a lot of information to take in, but it complemented our learning objectives for this project perfectly. Back at school the kids finished painting a river scene to accompany their writing assignment summarizing the previous week's field trip. I helped Cindy mount their pictures and writing samples on black paper to hang in the hall. Their writing has improved dramatically from the first samples I viewed!

Field trip! Urban Delaware River

This morning we had our second field trip. We visited the Coast Guard Base on Columbus Blvd to experience the fire department's fireboats. Tide was almost out, so we had to walk down a steep ramp to the floating dock. Two ships were tied up at the dock- a brand new pumping boat and a 60-year old workhorse which we were told helps the Coast Guard chop up ice floes in Winter. We boarded the pump boat and the groups went up one by one into the wheelhouse to hear the pilot speak. I kept an eye on deck, so Cindy will have to elaborate. While the groups waited their turn I tried to engage the kids in thinking about what they saw along the river and how it was different from our previous ship. The children were very excited to see ducks, seagulls, and a very small school of fish in the water.
After the talk the pilot asked the engineer to start up the pumps. The boat has three spray nozzles: one on the bow of the boat which swivels left and right, one at the stern which swiveled up and down and left and right, and one very large one on top of the wheelhouse that shot the water nearly straight up. The students had great fun taking turns controlling the direction of the spraying water, pretending to put out fires. It was even more impressive when all three nozzles were going at full force!
After that great adventure, the pilot took us on a tour of the rest of the pier. We looked at a buoy boat which checks on and places red and green buoys in the river to direct the boat traffic. We also saw various police boats. Some were very small and fast, others had removable sides for aiding in rescue and to allow divers to ease into water. We saw a Pilot boat which takes a pilot out to a ship to steer a foreign ship up the river. On the opposite bank of the river we viewed huge container crane elevators that lift container boxes onto ships. We saw a stack of orange shipping containers, and even saw one drive by on the bed of a truck. This helped explain how goods are brought from other countries, like toys and food, in big containers and then set onto trains and trucks to carry throughout the country. The Pilot also explained that it's the Coast Guard's job to protect us and to inspect the goods and people that come into our port cities on boats.

Saying goodbye to our pilot, the kids hopped back on the bus to make a short trip to the Great Plaza at Penn's Landing. We ate lunch at the riverside- a challenge with all the hungry seagulls about! There's a very detailed engrave scale model of the Delaware River along the promenade, so after lunch we lined the kids up for a follow-the-leader down the river. Before we started I asked if they remembered in which state was the river's source (New York!), and then as we go down the river what state is on our right (PA!), and on our left (NJ!) and where is the mouth of the river (Atlantic Ocean!). Walking down the river we noted all the tributaries and major cities along the path. We had enough free time to allow for some sketching. I helped one boy do a grid enlargement of the river engraving he wanted to draw so much. I drew out a grid on his page after asking him to count how many tiles there were. Then we looked at each tile and found the lines to match up with the squares on the page. Other students drew the Ben Franklin bridge, and others noted the many birds about.

We took one last stroll down to a Steamboat docked at the landing, then returned to the bus and back to school. There's so much new information to think about! I'm eager to get back into the classroom so we can process these ideas with our art projects and writing. One more Field trip to go on Friday!

Field trip sketching video

Field Trip!!

This morning we all got onto a big yellow school bus with our students and some parent chaperons for our trip up to see a rural section of the Delaware River. We had the kids bring along their sketchbooks and reminded them to be aware of people, houses, plants, animals, uses, and problems of the river throughout the day. I told them they might want to sketch something they noticed from those categories as we might want to use that information later on in our project.
I was surprised that we took mainly back roads and no major highways on the ride up to Upper Black Eddy, Bucks County. This route offered numerous opportunities for the children to observe rural community and land features, and they were eager to sketch on the way up. "HORSES!!!!!" was a common cry. Students noted corn-stubble fields, barns and fences, mountains, ponds, geese, deer, small creeks which grew into larger streams as we neared the river, the Delaware Canal, and of course the Delaware River! Mrs. O'Donnell passed out a tourist map of the Bucks County area to the kids mid-trip, and students searched for the boat we would ride on. As they examined the maps I asked them how many bridges they could find, where the canal was and how it looked different from the river (it was thin and straight not wide and curvy), where the compass rose was on the map, etc. Some students were inspired to sketch the map or the boat as they imagined it would be afterwards. This was the first time I'd ever been on a field trip as a student or a chaperon where I felt the journey itself was part of the educational experience!

When we arrived in Upper Black Eddy, we were greeted by Captain Dee of the Bucks County Riverboat Company. We boarded "The River Otter", a flat bottom pontoon boat which we were told could navigate the river even in 2 foot shallows! Before we launched, Captain Dee asked if we had noticed all the mud on the ramp and dock, and explained that just a week ago the river level was a good 6 feet higher due to massive rain. He also showed us what the highest flood level had been in recent years and told us that people who live near the river often have their houses flooded. Some of the houses must even be rebuilt on stilts to avoid the floods.

We motored upriver under a truss bridge that had been built in 1843 and saw lots of logs piled up against its stone supports- further evidence of the recent heavy flooding. Along the way Captain Dee helped the kids brainstorm some of the river animal life. In particular he explained the contrasting spawning habits of the American Shad and the American Eel. The former lives in the ocean and swims up the river to spawn, and the latter lives in the river but migrates all the way to Bermuda and the Sargasso sea to spawn. The kids spotted Turkey vultures circling the New Jersey bluffs and a Great blue Heron at the water's edge. It surprised us all when the Heron took flight and swooped past the boat! Dead fish and turtles were some other notable wildlife. I was impressed by the breadth of Captain Dee's repertoire of information. I wondered if Mrs. O'Donnell had asked him to cover certain topics, as it all seemed wonderfully relevant to our goals.

After our boat ride we hopped back on the bus, crossed to NJ over the truss bridge we'd ridden under, and headed downriver to Bull's Island Recreation area. We stopped for a quick picnic lunch, then took a walk over the pedestrian-only suspension bridge which connects NJ and PA at Bull's Island. The kids enjoyed standing in "2 places at once" between the states, and experiencing the vibrations of the suspension bridge.

We then headed back to the Visitor center lawn for a presentation by a state park historian (I missed her name!). The historian shared maps and pictures of the Delaware and Raritan Canal, and explained that it was built in 1830 by workers with shovels and wheelbarrows to connect trade between Philadelphia and New York City. She told us how the boats were towed up the canal by mules on the towpath. She revealed a working model of a canal lock and explained how the parts worked to lift and lower canal boats like an elevator for going up hills. She also showed us a model of a swing bridge with an A-frame which would allow boats to pass when the bridgekeeper heard their horns blow. I'm not sure how much the kids retained from her talk... there were a lot of bathroom trips, worries about the numerous bugs (daddy long legs and stick bugs!), end-of-trip distraction and tiredness, and the kids were too spread out on the lawn for the historian to really actively engage.

On the bus ride home we encouraged more sketching. I pulled out my own sketchbook and started drawing kids, much to their delight. I was transported back to my school days when my classmates would ask me to draw them and I found my niche as the class "artist".

It was along and exciting trip. What better way for students to learn about rivers than to experience them first hand? I believe this will provide rich background for our further explorations. Back in the classroom I pulled aside pairs of students for quick video interviews about what we've learned so far.

I have to compile the video footage I've shot so far and add it to the post.