Science! In Action...

   This past week our department participated in Science in Action and Spring Break Escape, two outreach activities that work with kids in our state to learn more about science. The former is part of our museum's Newman-Whittman ExplorOlogy Program, the latter is by our Education Department.  
       Laura and Tamaki, our dynamic department duo, helped do the Spring Break Escape portion because I was in the field with the Science in Action team. They brought out specimen drawers from our collection to talk about our insects and other recent invertebrates, which as you know we have a lot of! It went really well, despite some events with the building that were unpredicted. Having them do the programing along with our two exhibits on spiders and insects is a great pairing.
      Science Escape is a program that takes elementary to middle-school age kids into Sutton Wilderness to learn about the scientific method and fieldwork. We [Jes and Kristi from the ExplorOlogy program, Jessa and I as science experts] first go to the schools and teach them about the scientific method. Then, once they learn the basics of it (observations; ask questions; develop hypothesis; test hypothesis; draw conclusions), we take them out into the field to make observations of the world around them at Sutton. There are 5 environments at Sutton that we take them to: woods, a pond (VERY dried out pond), lake, wetlands, then grasslands. While in the environments we have them look for the things that interest them or give them questions that they'd like to learn more about later. Once we wrap up our observations of the different environments at Sutton, we take them back to the museum to write down their observations in the field journals we give each kid for them to keep. This is followed by lunch, and then formulating questions in groups that they can develop a hypothesis and a experiment to test it with. Then we go back into the field and actually attempt to test the hypotheses, and then wrap up with program with drawing conclusions and answering any other questions about science or the scientific method.

Overview of Sutton Wilderness Park from the BioBlitz website

     We had four days of this program, with ages of the kids ranging from 3rd graders to 8th graders. Some of the more interesting questions we had included: what lives in holes; which habitat has the most frogs; and are there more insects in trees or grass. The kids had a great time looking for animals, and a lot of them really enjoyed just getting in the mud of the lake and pond and getting completely covered in dirt. Since some of the kid's groups are from inner-city OKC, many have never been in the field, so just getting outside was a joy for them. In the field over the 4 days we saw at least 3 species of frogs, a red-tailed hawk, lots of red-eared slider turtles, crayfish, ducks, snails, millipedes, lots of isopods (rolly pollys), cardinals, butterflies, beetles, etc. Many of these sightings were first for the kids. Personally, I'm really happy since many were into the insects and spiders: yay!
       Overall it was a lot of fun and I think we reached out to a lot of kids this week. Lets go Science!