June 4th, 2015 BROWNS COULEE ADVENTURE

Hello Parents and Students,

We had a perfect day for their PHENOMINAL Browns Coulee Day Trip on Thursday, June 4th! 

We began with a “safety” activity in the classroom, where we each created “shoe” rubbings of our runners dated with our names.  Ms. Selimos kept those, in case were lost in the forest and needed to be rescued.

Many thanks to the 9 parent volunteers and to Lori Milligan, from the Outdoor Ed. Department, who helped to make this science adventure such a success!  The boys and girls exited the bus quietly and took in the view with their eyes and noses, as we took a few group pictures with parents.  Lori showed the class various plants; blue bearded tongue, regular and irregular flowers,    the sage plant, which is a natural mosquito repellant and more.  

Various students took turns caring for the male and female “tick jars”.  The class collected about 13 ticks throughout the day, with the male tick jar in the lead!

Tomorrow morning I would like to tally and graph how many ticks parents found on their children Thursday evening.  The female ticks have a “necklace” stripe on them and the males have “suspenders” on them.

Another interesting activity involved THATCHER ANTS.  Lori carefully disturbed a hill of these thatcher ants by poking at them.  When they are threatened they release an acid scent that smells and tastes like vinegar!  The children each had a sniff!  Did you know that these ants are edible?   YES!!!!!!!!!   Imogen, Roan and Hunter were very brave and ATE SOME!

Pond dipping was a blast, as we collected tadpoles, frogs, water mites, mosquito larva, beetles, water spiders, dragon fly larva, fishing spiders, snails, minnows and more.  We looked for buffalo snot (jelly lichen) which tastes like noodles, pussy toe plants, which taste like bubble gum and violets, which are edible. 

We broke for lunch and enjoyed the creek, sunshine and chatting with parents and classmates.  We did some stone skipping along the creek.  We continued with another hike, after lunch, looking at various plants, lichen and saw many willow trees with lichen.  These are thus called, diamond willow trees.

Next, Lori read a book called: Fairy Houses.  Following the story, the children had their own opportunity to create their own “fairy houses”.  After photos were taken of their creations, we hiked to a beaver lodge and finally climbed a very steep hill, making our way back to the bus.

We had many tired boys and girls and parents too, on the bus ride home.  “Merci beaucoup”, to our bus driver, for getting us to and from Grant Road School safely. 

  Many thanks to the BROWN FAMILY for providing us with this wonderful opportunity to explore their farm land and coulee!!!  We really appreciated the amazing day! 

Ms Selimos J