Can you believe that we’re halfway through the summer already? While this summer is certainly different than most, we’re still taking on exciting new projects and preparing for the upcoming school year, whatever that may look like!
As the possibility of field trips this fall becomes less likely, we are developing new ways to engage students with our Water Quality Monitoring program, the most popular South Sound GREEN offering for local schools. One way we’re doing so is by documenting all of our testing sites with pictures and videos. Even if students can’t visit the sites themselves, they can still see what their site looks like – and hopefully while testing water from that site that we bring to them! It’s been a fun project to visit all 50+ sites and remind myself about how beautiful our local aquatic environments can be.
Additionally, we had the incredible opportunity this month to do water quality testing with students – in person! We worked with the Capitol Land Trust, who is hosting a group from the Northwest Youth Corp on one of their preserves. These students are living in isolation for weeks while working on conservation and reforestation projects daily. In doing so, these students effectively self-quarantine, so we were able to be a part of their nightly speaker series and bring hands-on activities as well! After talking with the students about the local watershed and salmon, we tested the water quality of the nearby salmon-bearing creek. It was South Sound GREEN’s first in-person interaction with students in about four months, and it felt great to be working with these environmentally conscious high schoolers face-to-face (or mask-to-mask). And as a bonus, the water quality results all looked great too!
South Sound GREEN is still publishing weekly Home Science Activities in ThurstonTalk, and you can find all of those activities here. School might not be starting for another month, but when it gets here we’ll be ready!
