Elms Beach Field Trip

I think Nolen was excited to be going on his field trip! I also think that school buses haven't changed in 25 years. I found myself worrying about the kids that were leaning out into the aisle while the bus was moving. School buses look way more dangerous as a parent than they did as a kid!

I was pretty impressed with the program at Elms Beach. It was divided into two sections. In the morning the kids read a book about animals, then talked about classifying animals into Classes (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects...). After she passed around some critters, including the gecko that is crawling on Nolen, the kids went outside to dig up whatever they could find. We didn't find much...bugs, worms and the like. At the end of our walk, one of the boys found a big (7inches across) turtle in a tide pool just a few yards from the beach! The beach, by the way, is the Chesapeake Bay. 

After lunch they talked about the life cycle of a frog. Did you know that some frogs take 18 months to go from egg to frog? We observed some frogs, tadpoles and frog eggs, then we talked about temperature. We used thermometers to record the temperatures of 3 containers of water, and the air temperature at several points around the area. Pretty cool for first grade.

This is a vernal pool. It is where salamanders and frogs might lay their eggs in these clumps of jelly egg sacs. Gross! If the vernal pools dry up the eggs will die.