Wetlands

We are going on a fun field trip on Monday to the wetlands in Alviso so we have been learning all about them this week. My awesome team member, Robi, convinced a ranger to let her take some items back to school for us to study.

Did you know that wetlands actually filter water? We did our own experiment to see if it really works.
1. We turned a 20 oz. soda bottle upside down into a glass jar. Then we poured in a cup of rocks,

 a cup of sand,

and a cup of peat.

You need to run water through at this point until the water runs clear.

Then we made muddy water by adding a half cup of potting soil to a jar of water.

Finally, we poured our muddy water in and watched in amazement as the water that came through was pretty clean!

We did notice that less water came through and hypothesized that it was absorbed by the filter.


 Bill Nye has a great wetlands video which was extra fun since most of the kids had never seen his wackiness!

We also read this cute and informative book that Robi got from the field trip last year. I forgot to take a picture but there was also a finger puppet of Salty the mouse who helped me read the book! :-) The Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse is endangered and only lives in the S.F. bay area! I am sure some of the kids will claim to have seen Salty even though the mouse is nocturnal. ;-)