Did you know you could measure the height of a tree using a tape measure, a person and a pencil? Or that digging a few inches down in the dirt can reveal four different layers of soil? The students from the Eddy School 4th Grade science class can tell you how!
“We want to encourage children and their parents to enjoy Brewster’s woodlands” said Hal Minis, President of the Brewster Conservation Trust. Toward that end eighty 4th grade students from the Eddy School science program explored BCT’s Hay Conservation Center. On November 8 and 9 eighty young naturalists played detective using their eyes and ears, measuring tools and reference materials and recorded what they found on data sheets and iPad cameras.
One fourth grader said, “I didn’t know there was so many things you can look at in the woods”. What did they learn? “We identified different trees by feeling their bark, looking at the shape of the leaves or counting the number of pine needle bundles” said one young scientist, and “We learned that there were many living things underneath leaf litter and fallen logs” said another.
After returning to the classroom Patsy Marchant, the Eddy School Science Curriculum Leader, wrote: “I was so happy to see how engaged and amazed the kids were studying outdoors. Our first collaboration was a grand success, thank you, thank you, thank you!”
