Wonderful Wildflowers

New Plant Restoration Activity Now Available

The "Wonderful Wildflowers" activity will give your students the chance to help restore California native plants to our local landscape. With this activity your students will learn why native plants are important and then have the chance to plant some of their own! After folding and decorating their own seed envelopes, students will place a few spoonfulls of soil mixture into their envelope then add a pinch of local wildflower seed to take home and plant.

This activity comes with background information and instructions for teachers, an envelope-making sheet to photocopy for each student, and a small bag of wildflower seed. We can provide a bag soil mix (pictured) or you can use your own (you will need about 3-4 cups total).

Late winter and early spring are the best times to sow wildflower seed. Please let us know if you would like this activity for your classroom!

River of Words Workshop

River of Words Workshop- Retreat


This workshop is designed especially for you!
Revitalize your teaching by revitalizing yourself!

Where: Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose
When: February 27, 2010
Time: 9 am – 4 pm with Lunch provided
Fee: $65.00

Included: * A 270-page “Watershed Explorers Educators’ Guide” (K-12) designed to build multiple literacies and to help students develop an informed "sense of place."
* Children’s Discovery Museum’s BioSITE (Students Investigating Their Environment) Environmental Science Curriculum for High School- Elementary Service Learning Program.

RSVP: By 2/1/2010
To Sandy Derby- 408.298-5437 x261
sderby@cdm.org
Details will follow RSVP

Facilitated by Pamela Michael, ROW executive director and co-founder

River of Words® (ROW) is a nature-based science, art and poetry program created to promote watershed awareness, literacy and the arts. Through our annual youth art and poetry contest and educator's tools, River of Words helps young people explore the natural and cultural history of their own communities.

The River of Words (ROW) workshop provides K-12 educators (classroom teachers and other non-formal educators) with ideas and inspiration for integrating nature exploration and the arts into core subject areas like science and math, social studies, and language arts.

Explore creek ecology and the natural and cultural history of the area's watershed, combined with a study of the "art of creeks” and the “language of landscape”
Learn to inspire nature-based art and poetry
Learn about your watershed and bioregion
Make and take your own journal
Explore new resources, from videos to books and websites
Inspire and spark students' imagination and sense of wonder

Retreat Reflect Revitalize

Salmon and Trout Education Project

For any of you looking for a great teacher training opportunity, consider the Salmon and Trout Education Project Teacher Workshop on Feb 20-21 in Santa Cruz. Many of our BioSITE teachers have participated in the past and have found it a rewarding workshop. A registration form and more information can be found here and here -- registration is due on January 20.

Reminder for ACE Teachers -- Activity after Day 1 classroom visit

Just a quick reminder for all of you who are involved with ACE -- Please have your students do the "Draw Yourself at the River" page after the Day 1 classroom visit. Have the students imagine themselves at the river site and draw some of the things they expect to see near the river when they come to the museum for their ACE Day 2. This makes a great transition between the two days -- and also reminds them about the program if there is a big time gap between your watershed lesson and your first field trip.

The journal page for this is about the 5th page in to the journal (the page just before the ones we wrote on when I visited the classroom).

Thank you to all!

Kit Showcase: Dissect a Feather

"A Feather is a Letter From a Bird" -- So explore one!! Our feather dissection kit includes feathers, magnifiers, and feather diagrams to help students improve their obervation and diagramming skills. This kit allows an exploration of form and function, and after they've finished their investigation, you can encourage students to explain how it is that a bird can fly.

 

View the kit activity card and list of materials in the kit.

For those of you in the Pioneer and Leland programs, this activity ties in with the bird unit later in the year; for all, it's a great kit to encourage students to make detailed observations of part of our natural world.

Kit Showcase: Satellite Image Watershed Exploration

A new kit for this week -- Exploration of our watershed using satellite images from Google Earth. Students discover what is to be found in our watershed by assembling a giant map of the watershed from 8 1/2" X 11" laminated Google Earth images of the south bay.

Some sample puzzle pieces include:
bottom of the watershed
 
middle of the watershed
 
near the top of the watershed
 

Kids can find the bay, local creeks, roads, schools, their neighborhood, parks, airports, mountains, gravel pits, and much more, and then see how the local water drains through it all.

ACE teachers will know this activity as their Day 1 activity in the classroom; our spare copy is now available as a kit for everyone else to check out for use with their classes. Please give it a try!

View the kit activity card and kit materials card. You can also get the .kml file for download to look at in Google Earth on your computer here.

River Of Words Contest

Are you truly hoping that they learn what it means to be River Guardians this year?

Are you looking for something to spark their creative minds?

Check out the River Of Words Contest details-- and explore the beautiful selection of student poetry and art. You will be amazed!!!

If you decide to participate in this inspiring contest- let us know. We would appreciate the opportunity to showcase your students' work here at Children's Discovery Museum for the 2010 BioSITE Open House in April.

Also, we have invited Pamela Michaels, Travel author and Director of the River of Words Program to lead a workshop here at CDM this February- we will keep you informed as that shapes up.

So are you ready to be amazed by your students creative talents? The contest deadline is December 1st. Check it out!
http://www.riverofwords.org/contest/index.html