Here is the article in today's newspaper on the homeschool class the girls have been taking at the state park. Only one little comment that I made was put in there (highlighted) but I didn't get credit. We remebered about it this morning but with so much to do today, we forgot to get a paper. We stopped into Chick-fil-A for dinner and remembered. They always have the day's paper so we asked if we could have that one section. Here's the picture and article.
*Emily on right with pink jacket, Becca with blue shirt, me in left hand corner- just the tip of my skirt and shirt behind Christen.
Christen Miller (left), an interpreter at Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield County, works with children during the winter/spring series of Discovery Programs for Home-SchoolersBy KATHERINE CALOS
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Think of kids running down a hill at Pocahontas State Park as raindrops starting to flow toward the Chesapeake Bay, and you'll begin to understand how fun can be used to teach a lesson about the watershed.
The sunny-day romp was one of the ways a group of children worked off some energy and learned about pollution during the winter/spring series of Discovery Programs for Home-Schoolers.
Groups of home-schoolers have used the park as a resource for years by requesting programs that fit in with the children's lessons.
Now the park is making it easier for home-schoolers who aren't part of a group to take advantage of the resources. Programs -- on insects, fish, a pond safari, vascular plants and nonvascular plants -- continue into May. Previous topics included geology, birds, reptiles and amphibians.
A watershed, explained park naturalist Christen Miller on Wednesday, is the area that drains into a river or larger body of water. In Virginia, the land east of the mountains is generally in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The Richmond area is also in the James River watershed.
To show how pollution flows downstream, Miller brought out a plastic landscape called an Enviroscape.
The home-schoolers sprinkled cocoa and powdered-drink mix on the landscape to represent soil erosion and chemicals. Bits of styrofoam became litter. Chocolate milk represented sewage or oil.
Then they created raindrops from a spray bottle and watched as the runoff into their lovely lake made it look disgusting.
A few preventive measures kept the lake cleaner on a second try.
Vegetation "planted" with sticky tape along the edges of streams helped keep silt from washing into the water. Fences kept cows out of the streams so they wouldn't stir up the water and deposit manure in it.
Earthen berms made of clay contained overflow from the sewage treatment plant. Farmers and homeowners had learned not to overfertilize, keeping excess nutrients out of the streams.
"Let's make it rain and see if it looks quite so bad," Miller said. Even though "it's not possible to keep 100 percent of the pollution out of the lake," the modifications made a difference.
Talking about watersheds tends to make people's eyes glaze over, said Miller, referring to her experience on summertime canoe trips on the park lake. She keeps talking about it anyway because it is important."We're all connected," she said. "The watershed is a way to see that connection."
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Think of kids running down a hill at Pocahontas State Park as raindrops starting to flow toward the Chesapeake Bay, and you'll begin to understand how fun can be used to teach a lesson about the watershed.
The sunny-day romp was one of the ways a group of children worked off some energy and learned about pollution during the winter/spring series of Discovery Programs for Home-Schoolers.
Groups of home-schoolers have used the park as a resource for years by requesting programs that fit in with the children's lessons.
Now the park is making it easier for home-schoolers who aren't part of a group to take advantage of the resources. Programs -- on insects, fish, a pond safari, vascular plants and nonvascular plants -- continue into May. Previous topics included geology, birds, reptiles and amphibians.
A watershed, explained park naturalist Christen Miller on Wednesday, is the area that drains into a river or larger body of water. In Virginia, the land east of the mountains is generally in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The Richmond area is also in the James River watershed.
To show how pollution flows downstream, Miller brought out a plastic landscape called an Enviroscape.
The home-schoolers sprinkled cocoa and powdered-drink mix on the landscape to represent soil erosion and chemicals. Bits of styrofoam became litter. Chocolate milk represented sewage or oil.
Then they created raindrops from a spray bottle and watched as the runoff into their lovely lake made it look disgusting.
A few preventive measures kept the lake cleaner on a second try.
Vegetation "planted" with sticky tape along the edges of streams helped keep silt from washing into the water. Fences kept cows out of the streams so they wouldn't stir up the water and deposit manure in it.
Earthen berms made of clay contained overflow from the sewage treatment plant. Farmers and homeowners had learned not to overfertilize, keeping excess nutrients out of the streams.
"Let's make it rain and see if it looks quite so bad," Miller said. Even though "it's not possible to keep 100 percent of the pollution out of the lake," the modifications made a difference.
Talking about watersheds tends to make people's eyes glaze over, said Miller, referring to her experience on summertime canoe trips on the park lake. She keeps talking about it anyway because it is important."We're all connected," she said. "The watershed is a way to see that connection."
1 comment:
Ha!
Great minds think alike, huh?
I thought it was a pretty good article.
Like I said on my blog, it's really nice to see homeschoolers positively portrayed.
It's too bad she didn't get any of your quotes into the article.
I HAD wondered what you guys discussed.
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