Saturday, February 12, 2005

Water is home for many creatures, students learn

Audry Olmsted El Defensor Chieftain Reporter

AOLMSTED Zimmerly Elementary School students donned rubber boots and waded out into a pond at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge this week to investigate whether or not the water is healthy.

In the third part of a series of trips through Rivers and Birds, an organization dedicated to teaching young children about the value of conservation in New Mexico, Zimmerly kids took a hike along Canyon Trail searching for animal tracks and waded out into ponds to search for bugs who call the refuge home.

"It was a real simplified geological study," said Alexis Rykken, facilitator of the program.

Students, she said, had fun looking for and identifying different animal tracks, such as the mule deer and the kangaroo rat on their hiking trip.

Rykken said she wanted children to understand what makes water healthy and a viable home to the little critters that reside in its depth.

Rykken talked with children how water becomes unhealthy when it is polluted and therefore uninhabitable by birds and bugs.

These trips every week to points in and around Socorro are not just lessons in the birds and rivers in New Mexico, but also a lesson on how respect the world around us.

Rykken said she wants to instill a sense of respect in children when they are out in nature, in the wild.

""This is other creatures homes. We're just a species among species," she said.

The facilitator said she taught the children to be aware of their surroundings by remaining quiet.

"It really is a foreign language almost," she said.

Down at the water, Zimmerly children waded out into the water, sifting through it to find bugs. The bugs were collected and examined under microscopes. They were then safely returned to the water, reinforcing the idea to respect the nature and creatures around us.

While children went into the water in small groups, other children scoped out good places to sketch what they saw around them.

Next week, the children will put away their hiking boots for one week and will hear a presentation on river and wetland ecology in the classroom.

aolmsted@dchieftain.com

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