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| Students working together to come up with a strategy to harvest the most rainwater! |
Ninety Tulia students joined the OC Playa Festival team at the Home Mercantile in Nazareth, Texas for an exciting day of learning. This festival was enjoyed by the students, four teachers, and even the bus drivers took part in this exciting day. The festival was introduced by Darryl Birkenfeld with an overview on what to expect to learn about, specifically playas, and the importance of the world around us. Julie Hodges followed with a presentation on journal writing as a tool to gather information with text, art, and mapping. Armed with information and tools, the students were loaded up and driven out to the Playa Classroom for an experience with the outdoors as they have never seen. Rainwater Harvesting proved to be a pretty competitive project. The students(In small groups) were challenged to harvest the most amount of rainwater using sponges and non-soluable squares as the surface for the rainwater. The goal here is to position your props in such a way as to have as little run-off water as possible then measure the water in the sponges only. The interaction between the students was amazing. Social skills were put to the test! The Playa raptors presentation was very engaging (even the bus drivers were engaged). Gail Barnes does a beautiful job of explaining the facts and details about owls. Gail brings the raptors from the South Plains Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Lubbock, Texas. The birds are gorgeous to look at and students are amazed to see these creatures at such a close distance. I enjoyed the outdoor classroom where my group made some soil and macro invertebrate observations before heading out to the playa for some interaction with nature and journaling. Jim Stieret's demonstration consisted of water buffers and waterfowl. I have assisted in the buffer presentation in the past and it has to be one of the best buffer models I have seen. Thanks, Tulia, for visitng the Playa Classroom!
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