Category: South Sound GREEN

South Sound GREEN, Updates

Monthly Update – June 2026

Stephanie Bishop
Teachers walking down the boardwalk of Boston Harbor Marina

And with that, South Sound GREENS has wrapped up the 2025-2026 school year! Through rain, shine, and all the seasons, we got thousands of students outdoors to learn about our wonderful watershed.

None of this would be possible without teachers. As a thank you, we like to support our teachers by inviting them to our Summer Institute for Teachers. This is a 3-day professional development event curated for teachers participating in South Sound GREEN, Nisqually River Education Project, or Chehalis Basin Education Consortium educational programming that is hosted by the Billy Frank Jr Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge.

Every year we have workshops and speakers related to a theme. This year’s theme was Tides of Change: Learning About Puget Sound Recovery. There were some fascinating conversations and teachers got firsthand experience doing educational activities they can bring back to the classroom!

This wouldn’t be an outdoor educational event without some actual outdoor education. On top of learning at the Refuge, teachers were taken on their very own field trips! In the morning we went to Boston Harbor to learn all about life in the estuary, from nudibranchs to plankton. After some much needed cool drinks, we moved on over to Meyer’s Point Environmental Field Station. Here teachers got to dissect an oyster, learn about Indigenous archeology, experience forestry practices, and make a yummy seaweed salad!

To our community partners and volunteers, thank you! It is an honor to work with so many people who are just as excited as us to teach and learn about our environment.

See you next school year!

Environmental Education, Nearshore, South Sound GREEN, Updates

Monthly Update – May 2026

Stephanie Bishop
3rd graders at Burfoot playing CRAB-O while holding out a hairy shore crab

With Summer just around the corner, South Sound GREEN has been joining students in our Nearshore and Eye on Nature field experiences!

8th graders from the Olympia School District are traversing Meyer’s Point as they rotate through various stations run by some of our community partners. These students get to pull invasive blackberry, learn about forestry practices, dissect an oyster, and explore the mudflat with all its critters. Through mud, rain, and shine, these middle schoolers got a day full of exciting environmental experiences! A huge thank you to our community partners that make these trips possible.

May also means it’s time for our 3rd grade Nearshore field trips! 3rd graders from Olympia have been exploring the intertidal zone of Burfoot Park near Boston Harbor. All throughout the month they’ve been learning about different plant adaptations, participating in an intertidal scavenger hunt, and getting CRAB-O as they search for hairy shore crabs along the beach. It’s such a joy to help foster respect for the outdoors in students so early on in their education. Thanks to our volunteers for sharing their knowledge with the students!

We also had our very first Eye on Nature field trip this month. Students from Garfield Elementary school came to the Billy Frank Jr Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge to learn all about plants and animals. 5th graders in the morning started with either nature mapping or ethnobotany, either logging the animals they found on the trail or investigating plants and how humans interact with them. After lunch at the twin barns, the groups would swap and experience the other activity. Some students even got to spot the elusive white-faced Ibis!

We finished the last of our North Thurston Public School Nearshore trips at Squaxin Park this month. Thanks to Olympia Parks for their help to make these trips possible!

We also joined our Envirothon teams at the Washington State Envirothon, hosted by Okanogan Conservation District at Conconcully State Park! High school students from all over the state competed in aquatics, soils, forestry, wildlife, and an oral presentation to try and make it to the national competition. A huge hurrah! for all the teams that competed. Great job everyone!

South Sound GREEN, Updates

Monthly Update – April 2026

Stephanie Bishop
High school students competing at the Soils station at the South Puget Sound Regional Envirothon at the Billy Frank Jr Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge

April showers are no match for South Sound GREEN! This month we’ve gotten back into the groove with our North Thurston Public Schools Nearshore trips and Envirothon.

We started our NTPS Nearshore high school trips at Meyers Point. Rain or shine, students got to choose between two career paths – Water Quality Technician and Restoration Ecologist. The WQ Techs got to rotate between the water quality monitoring and plankton stations while the Restoration Ecologists rotated between nature mapping and doing riparian survey work. It’s great to see these students try out new things and figure out what kind of work post school appeals to them! Soon, we will be starting our NTPS Nearshore and 8th grade OSD trips at Squaxin Park. Stay tuned!

April 23rd was our South Puget Sound Regional Envirothon competition! Teams from 13 different high schools and 5 counties congregated at the Billy Frank Jr Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge to put their environmental knowledge to the test. The students participated in hands on environmental exams about aquatics, soils, forestry, and wildlife. On top of that, they had to prepare and present an oral presentation on this year’s current issue – Non-Point Source Pollution. At the end of the day, the competitors got to attend a career panel featuring local environmentalists and ask questions about their paths that lead them to this work. It was a great day filled with learning and friendly competition. A huge thank you to the students and advisors who participated, our volunteers, and the Refuge! If you or someone you know is interested in the competition and want to know more, reach out to Sam Nadell at snadell@thurstoncd.com.

Environmental Education, South Sound GREEN, Student GREEN Congress, Updates, Water Quality

Monthly Update – February 2026

Stephanie Bishop
Students from East Olympia conducting the dissolved oxygen test at their monitoring site.

With Spring right around the corner, South Sound GREEN has been getting back into the swing of water quality testing and prepping for our annual Student GREEN Congress!

This month, Thurston County students are returning to their monitoring sites to gather their Winter water quality data. These are the times of year that are the most important for local salmon. Rain, cold, or snow won’t stop these scientists!

TnT volunteers joined the Center for Natural Lands Management this past Valentine’s Day for their bonfire for prairie restoration! Volunteers got to collect various brush and limbs from trees cut down for safety and oak release and pile them into a bonfire. This bonfire helps restore our prairie habitats by spreading nutrient rich ash to support the ecosystem. And, of course, no bonfire is complete without s’mores! If you have a teen who is interested in getting some outdoor work experience, please contact Sam Nadell (snadell@thurstoncd.com).

Student GREEN Congress will be taking place on March 19th at The Evergreen State College and delegates are working hard in preparation! Students from elementary and middle schools all over the county will gather to share their water quality data from both Fall and Winter testing. Together they will work to identify hot spots, come up with action projects, and celebrate healthy water parameters. This event is done in collaboration with the Nisqually River Education Project and Chehalis Basin Education Consortium. If you’d like to know more about it, check out our Student GREEN Congress Webpage and this article from Thurston Talk!

South Sound GREEN, Updates

Monthly Update – January 2026

Stephanie Bishop
A student looking at benthics under a microscope.

Welcome back from winter break! Just because it’s still chilly outside doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get some outdoor education in. Our schedule was full of stream ‘bug’ lessons to complement our water quality education in the Fall and an MLK Day of Service with our Teens in Thurston volunteer group.

This month we visited classrooms of students who participated in our Fall water quality monitoring to show them another indicator of water health – benthic macroinvertebrates! We taught students about the importance of stream bugs, how they relate to salmon, and then grouped up around different bins full of water, stream sediment, and real-life bugs! They learned to use a dichotomous key and a pollution tolerance index to identify and group the different critters to determine the health of local waterways. It’s always a treat to show students the importance of water health and having fun while doing it.

Our January Teens in Thurston MLK Day of Service event took place at a local property owned by Dan Mazur, the founder of the Olympia Oyster Seed Planting Project. We were joined by Pacific Shellfish Institute and many volunteers to put together bags of Pacific oyster seed. Our volunteers managed to make 32 oyster bags with hundreds, if not thousands, of oyster seeds! These oysters will grow to provide food, habitat, and filtration services to the marine ecosystem to support the health of the water in Budd Inlet. A huge thank you to our volunteers and for the work that Dan and the Pacific Shellfish Institute put into making this even possible. If you or a high schooler you know is interested in outdoor and environmental volunteer work, please contact Sam Nadell at snadell@thurstoncd.com to join our email list.