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County schools have Earth Day field trip at McClellan
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On the first day of spring, Calhoun County fourth-graders took their annual Earth Day Field Trip at McClellan. They learned about recycling, eating well, staying safe around power lines and the unexploded ordnance that remains on many undeveloped parts of the former Army base. David West, coordinator for the Calhoun County Extension Office, which coordinated the event, spent Thursday afternoon talking about worms and the benefits of camouflage. "If we were out here in the fall and the grass was yellow, you'd want to be a yellow worm," West told his audience. Five hundred children made the field trip on Tuesday and 500 more attended Thursday. Wednesday got rained out, but they were glad for it, West said. |
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Downstairs in the Buckner Center, Marchale Burton showed the students how to eat right and gave them a special recipe for trail mix.
Terri Weaver, a fourth-grade teacher at White Plains Elementary School, said the annual field trip reinforces what she's doing in the classroom.
"The kids enjoy it, too," Weaver said. "They get to see it in action."
Dana Prickett, another fourth-grade teacher at White Plains, said her students got a kick out of the presentation on electrical safety by Alabama Power Co.
One of her students, Kohlton Hamann, 10, said he appreciated the lesson on recycling.
"I understood it, about how people should stop wasting stuff and recycle more," he said.
Oscar Martinez, an architect with Jenkins Munroe Jenkins, showed off a "green" building the company designed for Jacksonville State University at Little River Canyon.
He talked about how the building uses geothermal energy for heating and wood grown from trees cultivated for green building; every time foresters cut one tree for materials, they plant two, Martinez said.
He said he was surprised at how interested the children were and how aware they were of concepts like global warming.
"We're using a lot of cool technology to save a little bit of resources," he said.
Reprinted from The Anniston Star (www.annistonstar.com). Used with permission from Consolidated Publishing Company. Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
To see more photos visit the Calhoun County Extension Service website http://www.aces.edu/counties/Calhoun/earthday2008.php
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3/21/2008 |
