Day 1-Sunday-I was excited to come
because at first I never heard of science camp. When I arrived (it was at like,
4:30 maybe 5 pm) I couldn’t wait to get through the door. Right away as I
walked I saw the other kids. There were eight of us as my parents left I sat
there and talked to some other people. As soon as the last camper arrived we
had a fabulous supper of sloppy joes and nachos. After supper was over we
introduced ourselves and we got to work. The things we made for the weeks
activities were a plant press, a secchi disc, and a bug box. Along with the
items we made we got were water bottles, folders, pencils, a schedule and a
field journal, to keep our data
and important notes. As soon as we got all our stuff done (which I might add
was earlier then expected) we went back to our dorms to goof off till bed time.
Day 2-Monday-today we got up at 8 am.
We had the normal breakfast of cerial before starting our day. The first thing
on our agenda was a prairie vegetation walk. I learned a lot! Like did you know
that the root from a purple prairie clover can be used as an anesthetic? I
didn’t either but as soon as we all chewed on the bare root that Gary Larson
gave us, we started spitting like crazy our tounges were so numb! But after
that we learned even more about prairie flowers. Once that was all finished we
took some of the flowers and plants and put it in the plant press we made
yesterday. After we were done with that I saw what goggle earth was. I got to
see my house on a computer from a satellite. Isn’t that neat!
Our instructor Nels Trowlstrup let us
do a little G.I.S and G.P.S activity. What we were supposed to do is use the
gps to find a red flag with candy attached to it. I was paired with Madelyn and
we were with prairie group two, which were Brendan and Bryant. We found ours
almost right away before walking into a whole bunch of bushes! But it was worth
it. What we had to do about our gis stuff was we had to record the wind speed,
temperature, and the humidity near our spot and put that information in the
laptop so we could see the results. It was fun.
Kendra and Nathan let us put on our
swimsuits for the next activity which we were going down to the lake to get
some samples from the water. We also tested the transparency of the water with
our secchi discs. Before we did that we did a practice test with a mini secchi
disc into beakers of water with zero drops of food coloring up to 30 Taylor,
Madelyn and I went swimming while we were down there. Doug lost a few washers
in the water and I went down to try and get them. They were already in the muck
underneath and I got 2 out six. but the guys wouldn’t get in. We swam for maybe
a half our before it started to sprinkle. We left as soon as we could. Then we
had tator tot hot dish for supper. Yum. After supper we split up to doing our WebPages
for this site http://oaklakesciencecamp08.blogspot.com/ and studying the algae.
Before going to bed we had root beer floats and goofed off.
|
|
Sight Depth |
|
|
Drops |
Centimeters |
Average |
|
0 |
Infinity |
Infinity |
|
8 |
15 15 |
15cm |
|
18 |
9 9 |
9cm |
|
30 |
7 6 |
6.5cm |
Day Three- Tuesday-I woke up to a
breakfast of cereal, toast, yogurt and fruit. Only to move on to prairie birds.
K.C. Jensen, our instructor, showed us how to set up a bird net. They can’t see
the net but they can get easily caught in it. We caught two least flycatchers,
two common yellow throat warblers and an American gold finch that we gold study
and band. In the net he showed us how to set up, which we didn’t thing we would
catch anything in, we caught a barn swallow. What was cool is that he showed us
how to let them go without hurting them. He showed us how to tell the age and
sex of the bird. How to tell if it is young is if it has a purple fleshy skull
and fleshy soft legs. I stayed after to ask a little more about my favorite
type of bird, the owl. After that we had the usual sandwiches for lunch. Then
we moved on to the classroom for the next activity with Nels which was aquatic
insect adaptations. First he took us out on the boat and grabbed some sludge
from the bottom of oak lake. We used something called the eckmen drench. Then
we were on the shore and swooped our nets into the water. We caught a lot of
stuff. Then he had us pick out our favorite insect out of all of them and some
others that we wanted to study. My favorite was the crayfish, which technically
was a crustation. Then we swam for a while before heading back for a nice hot
dinner of chicken and potatoes. We then played a little game of Pictionary
before hitting the hay.
Day Four-Wednesday-today everyone woke up
only to go to the classroom for today’s activity which was actually pretty
cool. Paul Johnson was our entomologist, a scientist who studies insects. He
took us out into the meadow and had us catch a different variety of insects,
including an insect I found called a mayfly. Once we got back he taught us how
to pin them and label them for our bug box. I caught at least three spiders.
Bryant and Douglas were the only ones who caught butterflies and Bryant caught
at least four robber flies. Then we
headed in for sandwiches. After lunch we learned how to extract dye from
natural substances like Choke Cherries and Golden rod. We used that dye to make
tie-dye bandanas. It took the whole night to dye correctly. Then we went out
and set a snapping turtle trap out along with sixteen mammal traps, eight in
the prairie and eight in the forest. It had peanut butter in the trap for bait.
The traps wouldn’t work right away so we went in and had a delicious meal of
pizza, breadsticks, cinnamon sticks, and milk. For free time we came back to
continue on our insects and plant presses. I needed a little help from Nathan
because I had two, no three spiders in there that wouldn’t die and I also
needed help with identifying them. Also during the project time I tried to help
others with there plants. Then we went
on to the dining hall and our bedrooms to hang out and talk for a while before
going to bed for a goodnights rest.
Day five-Thursday-I
woke up today to discover a perfect breakfast of an orange. Following my
breakfast was a little yoga class with a new friend of mine named Mary. She is
so good at it that it almost seems like she teaches yoga herself (which I think
she does). After the relaxing yoga class, waking myself up, we headed down to
the classroom where we were getting ready to learn about woody plants- also
known as Trees. Jerry Krueger was our instructor who showed us how to take
samples from the tree to tell the age with out hurting the tree. We used a core
sampler. The trees that I took a sample from were box elder and an American elm
tree. We got to see the largest green ash tree there. Jerry hugged it, showing
how it was so HUGE in diameter. it was awesome. Then we had the regular lunch of
sandwiches before going to the next assignment, prairie mammles. we caught 3
ground squirrels and one deer mouse. One of the squirrels was dead though. it
was cool when she let them go.
We dissected owl pellets for our last
free time and then had our very very VERY last supper of spaghetti together.
And even finished up our web pages and our projects.going
into our last night together.
Ending
Day Five
Of oak
lake summer
Science
camp
Goodbye
everyone and have a fabulous summer!