Exploring a Salt Marsh

By Cheryl, Village School Parent

This month I went with the Cool Canaries and the Aloha Pineapples to the Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center in Palo Alto. This field trip was to get them ready to start a new science unit on animals and habitats. They began by learning the term “brackish” and how it describes the water in the Bay — a mix of sea water coming from the ocean through the golden gate, and fresh water coming from the rivers. They were then divided into groups to get up close and personal with some of the birds and plants and other wildlife that live in this unusual environment.

The group I was with started with bird watching. We were each given a pair of binoculars and a sheet to use to identify the birds we saw. The kids learned to tell the difference between the snowy egret (smaller, black beak, has a mohawk) and the great egret (much larger, yellow beak). Our next stop was identifying plants. Some of the plants had really interesting names like pickleweed, devil’s thread, and Rapunzel’s hair. Our last small group activity was in the lab. We looked at clean and dirty water samples under microscopes, looking for plankton. The kids each had a journal and were encouraged to draw what they saw on their slide in their journals. This was definitely a favorite activity!

The groups came back together at this point to do some net fishing. This was a super fun, mildly chaotic, and messy activity. We ended up catching a couple of small fish and a lot of tiny jellyfish. These went into a couple of buckets to be observed for a few minutes, and then were put back into the Bay. That was the end of our fun at the salt marsh. Definitely a fun and informative field trip!