We're chasing an endless summer or so it felt today on our field trip to Prince's Island. After hiking to the island, reading about Wild Island, eating lunch, looking for mushrooms and collecting berries the Cottontails were ready to dip their toes in the river by the time we got to the beach!
Although most of the day fell under free time (because the river speaks for itself), there was a lot of different learnings to take home and explore over the coming weeks.
Jono and Mettaya became very interested in trying to make dyes out of berries and using different materials to transfer the dyes. They spent a good part of the day journalling about the river, documenting how to make dye and then drawing an imaginary world of caves and selenite crystals. Something to investigate further is do crystals grow and if so how?
Priya, Breanne and Avyn were mostly occupied with catching minnows. They observed a number of traits about the minnows and the best ways to catch them. It was so exciting to catch them! This lead to a big discussion of what to do with them. The dilemma was whether or not to bring them home to study and grow them into a trout for dinner, or release them back in the river. We let them carry through with their decision to bring them home. They did their best to give them an environment that they could survive in with plenty of food (do minnows eat algae?) and shaded so the water would stay cool. Unfortunately they did not make the trip back over the bridge. It was a little shocking to witness how quickly and easily they could die taken out of their habitat. We're going to explore this further - what is the life cycle of a fish? - what do they eat in each stage? - what does too much algae in water do to fish?
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