Learning Tree Farms Revisited :o)

The better to SEE you with!
(Trying out the binoculars at Learning Tree Farms)

We went on another field trip to Learning Tree Farms; this time the subject was Environmental Studies. We were informed about different ways to combat different kinds of pollution...some that are readily available now, others might take a little research or time to be able to implement. Our first assignment was to survey an acre to get an idea of how big a piece of land that is, and pretend to plan and develop an acre of our own. We were instructed to use the environmentally friendly techniques we learned about or any others we could come up with. Each team of two people then had to come up to the podium to explain how they would make their acre safe for the environment.

After lunch, we had another short lesson, and then went outside to do some hands-on experiments to show the effects of erosion, run-off, and wetlands. The first experiment went as we expected-- we saw that plain dirt without any vegetation just ran off and took the soil with it...erosion. What was amazing was that a grassy patch of soil would filter the water and not be affected...the water remained very clear and some of it absorbed.

Another experiment was about wetlands. We made a "town" out of wooden blocks, then added "pollution," and then substitute "rain" and watched what happened to the pollution when there was a wetlands in the area.

I have an album of pictures here: Environmental Studies