We had a fantastic Saturday a week or so ago, which meant that many people from School could join us. We always have a great time with old and new friends. The days task involved locating a waterfall for some necessary supplies. On the way, we encountered challenges and spotted the changing seasons. We also played games and made lunch.
We are working through our national 5 in Environmental Science collectively, and Mondays are our day we focus on the on-site survey work. It's such a great resource to have each other to do things with and bounce ideas around. It also really keeps us on track - without having formal schooling as part of our day to day life, it's something we all value. This week we did some Kick Sampling in small streams firstly Ceres Burn by the Folk museum in Ceres and then by Craighall den in Ceres. This was to measure the difference in species variety in the two areas - one Urban and one not. Kick Sampling is a biological method of measuring varieties and amounts of samples. Official definition from the biology fieldwork site: Suitable for shallow running water with a gravel or muddy bottom. Hold a fine-mesh net in the direction that you are facing. This should be downstream of where you are standing. Use one foot to kick the bottom of the stream, dislodging the substrate in the direction of the net. There didn't seem to be much difference between the two places we studied, and this may come down to the fact that both sites are reasonably rural and close to each other. If we explored a city centre river and a country park stream, we might find a more pronounced variance - next time. Still, the exercise was useful in perfecting the method. After that we did some connecting with water challenges which we randomly chose from a large selection in a hat. One was to give a fake BBC News report about bodies of water in the UK. Another was to cross one particular body of water seven times in different ways without once getting wet. Then we debated the ethics of mass insect farming with one other person. Another one was to describe mycelium and its qualities backwards. The last one was to describe a day in the life of a dipper. While we were waiting to get picked up one of us explored some prehistoric art methodologies by using flower juice as a printing ink. The effect was quite chilling.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |