Summer Programs at Blackstone Park

Full details here: https://15minutefieldtrips.blogspot.com/p/blackstone-parks-programs.html

Be the Change

I can’t be at rallies or protests for a number of reasons. I’ve had pneumonia this time of year and have an auto-immune disorder. If I get arrested, I can say good-bye to my teaching career. I have a child that needs me. But I still want to do what I can to advocate for and protect those I love. This is just one action I am am taking in response to these times:

I teach about the environment through art. I teach about the importance, the necessity, of biodiversity. Children thrill at the diversity of colors and shapes and textures in leaves, in seeds. I teach about pollination, not just about the introduced domesticated honey bees, but the solitary bees, the butterflies and moths, the beetles, flies, ants, birds, and even bats that pollinate. Without insect pollinators, humanity would be wiped out. We don’t get to decide which insects get to pollinate our tomatoes, which more often will be a bumblebee, nor should we. Using pesticides and enforcing monocultures is toxic. Words of hate and racism and suppression of other races and cultures is toxic.

Today I continue work bringing nature to children. I am mostly engaged online, but I prepare for the time we can be together again. I struggled with putting nature under a plastic shield, wanting kids to touch actual leaves and galls knowing some would be crushed. Now I seal some of my favorite pressed leaves under lamination so each child I teach can look at their diversity before collecting their own leaves around where we are. I will wipe all the sheets down with Lysol. I’m placing robin egg shells, cicada exoskeletons, dragonfly exuvia, and oak apple galls inside clear plastic cases to pass around and wipe between each student, as they learn how nature solves problems.

We need to change our nature as a society. Be the change you want to see.

We need to change our nature as a society.  Be the change you want to see.

Ants In My Pants, Beetle Mania, and Anita Crackinstuff!

Need some silliness right now? Watch some beetle mania and more with Anita Crackinstuff and myself as we sing and dance and get the ants out of our pants!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QBHG64_XnQ

Preparing for a New Normal

As we all adjust to these rapid transitions, I wanted to let you know that you are not alone and there are even silver linings.  With the halt in industry and travel, CO2 emissions are down. Dolphins frolic in Italy. People are enjoying nature more. We've been forced to slow down.

Well, maybe after we learn how to navigate several new platforms, make dinner, and find new ways to live...  Take a deep breath.  Go outside.

In the next days and weeks, I'll be posting very easy and quick ways to live sustainably with little or no money. Some of this will be through repurposing materials, some will be gardening timelines and tips, some will be "mini vacations" around your neighborhood.  It's how I live.

So much of the American lifestyle generates waste at a systemic and institutional level.  The skills I will post here will help you live in a "closed loop", where nothing is wasted.  I hope you enjoy them.

Please leave a comment on what you'd like to learn, what you need.  Sign up for the email list so you know when I post.  There are many free resources at both sides of this page. Use them. Share them.  Learn a new recipe, an edible plant. Look to nature and how the earth solves problems and survives.

If you're able to make a donation, the button is on the right.  (If this post was shared, go to 15minutefieldtrips.blogspot.com.)

NEXT EVENTS!!!

February Vacation Events and Next Blackstone Event!

Need a nature or art break soon?  We have lots of workshops coming up.  For February vacation at the HeArtspot gallery, we have;

Tuesday February 18th 10:30-12
 "Winter Birds" collage art and citizen science
Thursday February 20th 10:30-12
"Fairy House" building with nature materials
Friday February 21st 1-2:30
"Trash Turtles" with recycled materials

Sign up here.

At Adventure Base Camp in Cranston, we have:

Wednesday, February 19th 11 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
"Animal Detectives" with outdoor scavenger hunt
(Our program runs 2-3:30.)

Sign up here.

Finally, save the date for the "March of Frogs" at Blackstone Park March 7th!  See our flyer for details.

Next Free Event!

Winter Birds

Spooky Spiders!!!

Fall Events

We have lots of fun events coming up!  Check out our flyer for school and youth group visits and birthday parties!

September 22nd Rocks and Fossils 11:30-1 at the RWP Botanical Center

https://www.facebook.com/events/687173991751390/

September 28th Fish Kites at Colt State Park and many more activities along the East Bay Bike Path 12-3

https://www.golocalprov.com/lifestyle/east-bay-bike-way-art-day-coming-to-be-held-at-east-bay-bike-path?fbclid=IwAR0QLixhRma-ZyE6WmApckGNG6oWYLobF3FpQ8ZwY4WHharA9iBx-Qwb2DM

October 5th Spooky Spiders 10-12 at Blackstone Park

https://www.blackstoneparksconservancy.org/events/spooky-spiders/

October 8th and 22nd, 2-4, Recycled Jewelry at HeArtSpot.

https://www.heartspotart.com/book-online

October 26th School Garden Conference

https://web.uri.edu/sgi/conference/

Workshops and More!

WORKSHOPS with 15 Minute Field Trips™

Contact Melissa at 15minutefieldtrips@gmail.com

Most workshops two hours at $5/participant.  Includes materials, set-up, running activity, and clean up.  We come to you!  Other options include guided hikes at various locations and custom-made STEAM activities tied to NGSS. 

Download resources at 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/15-Minute-Field-Trips   

15 Minute Field Trips   

WEBSITE: 15minutefieldtrips.blogspot.com

Fish Kites (Koi Nobori)

The Japanese celebrate the strength of their children by flying colorful carp streamers or kites in May.  Celebrate your strength: physically, emotionally, and mentally, by building and decorating a rectangular prism "wind sock".  We'll also look at patterns in local Rhode Island fish, from tiny golden shiners to long Northern pikes, pumpkinseeds, rainbow trout, and more!

Rock Stars (additional $15 charge per workshop on top of $5/participant)

Three rotating stations: 

1. Explore rocks and fossils and do a fossil texture rub with crayon.  

2. Use rocks (colored chalk) to tell a story (Mastery journey?) in the style of Anasazi petroglyphs (black paper and/or outside on sidewalk).

3. Paint "GOALS" or "Inspirational messages) on rocks to leave in public places or have at home. 

Self-Defense Strategies

Learn how animals defend themselves through armor, speed, and camouflage.  Create a chimera (mixed-up animal) with defenses of their choice.  Includes many visuals, crayons, colored pencils, markers, paper, and a live pill bug petting zoo.

Frog vs. Toad Slime Wars

Learn about the 10 frog and toad species in RI, design a game card, and get ready for battle trivia as we pit frog against toad for the best survival skills!  Winning team gets to pick the color of the slime, which we'll make after the battle.  Includes blank cards and colored pencils, visuals, audio samples to learn frog and toad calls, and zip lock bags to take home slime.

Eyes on Owls

Learn about local owls in a guided drawing lesson, an owl detective game, and dissecting owl pellets!  Helps build vocabulary and analyze clues through shapes, colors, and patterns.  Requires 2 weeks advance booking for supplies.  Additional $4 per owl pellet, which can be one per participant or one per group of four.

Bugeball

Gotta catch those bugs!  Learn about the orders of insects and what jobs they do while drawing from real preserved specimens.  Take this learning outside by catching insects and identifying them with field guides.  This program is offered spring, summer, and fall and requires advanced booking if done at a site different from your own.

Ant Detective

Look closely!  Ants are everywhere and we hardly notice!  Using hoops and string, we’ll look from an ant’s point of view and tally up behaviors we observe.  We’ll then create an underground treasure map with tunnels, worms, and more hidden underground.

Trash Turtles

Bring in clean “trash” to repurpose into turtles while learning how trash affects oceans and streams.  Get inspired by the shell patterns of local species!  

Ban the Bag

Create a “ripple” effect by painting a reusable bag in the style of Huichol yarn paintings, with ocean or freshwater animals with lots of water ripples.  Use this bag proudly whenever you shop and avoid single-use plastic.  Get tips on more ways to reduce single use plastics, one step at a time!  Bags and other materials provided.

Climate Change Kachina

Learn about climate change and weather through a fun card game and Kachina spirit guides, such as wise Mongwu the owl, Badger the plant and medicine expert, Crow Mother who shares resources, and Cold-Bringing Woman who saves water for spring by turning it into snow.  Create your own Kachina with repurposed materials.

Fish Frenzy

Learn about local fresh and salt-water fish.  Create fish prints (Gyotaku) using repurposed, post-consumer Styrofoam trays and ink.

Come Join Us!

We have lots of new adventures planned and I've been too busy to blog here.  But STUFF IS HAPPENING!!!! 

Check out our FB and Instagram pages under 15 Minute Field Trips for more updates.

Visit THIS site for access to resources, as well as the 15 Minute Field Trips shop.

May 18th we'll be at Roger Williams Park Zoo from 10-3 making art and discussing how to protect frogs and the American burying beetle.

Starting in July, we'll have FREE art activities followed by guided park explorations at 10 a.m. the first Saturday of the month at the Blackstone Park in Providence, RI.  See flyer below.

February Vacation FUN!!!!!

15 Minute Field Guide Experiences

15 Minute Field Guide

A field guide is in the works!  Check out my Patreon page to get exclusive access before it's available to the masses!  Download individual pages here.  Get that perfect last-minute gift for a nature lover!

Upcoming Events and SALE!!!

Happy Holidays!

I'll be presenting about some relatively familiar and some somewhat bizarre flora and fauna in Rhode Island as part of the always fun and hilarious Pechakucha!  Come join me  

WED, NOV 28 AT 8:20 PM

PechaKucha Night Providence #115 - Relativity

Askew Prov · Providence

https://www.facebook.com/events/282391015730278/?active_tab=about


Also, Monday and Tuesday get some of my screen-free nature activities 20% off here.

What Can Babies Tell Us?

How can babies tell us about their environment?  Recently, I visited three locations and collected macroinvertebrates (small and mostly immature insects still visible to the naked eye) from the ponds at Borders Farm in Foster, Buck Hill Wildlife Management Area in Pascoag, and Trustom Pond in Matunuck.  Different species have different pollution tolerances, so certain species would indicate how clean the water was.

Abstract art or animals?  Maybe water pennies?  Very tiny.

I first collected at Borders Farm, which has a small retainer pond with cattails, grasses, lily pads, algae, and lots of frogs.  I was there to run an insect workshop and in the past another collector found a number of insects as well as leeches.  I went into the shallow water with my rain boots and clean white plastic tubs, swishing my net back and forth through the fairly clear water.  It was teeming with water boatmen and I dumped every scoop into one of the tubs I had added pond water to.  I picked out the plants, swirling them one more time in the water and examining them before returning them to the pond.  I added clear pond water to the other tub and brought them both over to the table.    Then I waited for the sediment to settle.

Photographing these creatures posed its own challenges.    It was a sunny day and we were set up in the shade.  The sun was in my eyes most of the time, plus I was running a workshop.  But I did get a few shots of some of the creatures.  

Very pollution-tolerant are aquatic worms, blood worm midge larva, left-handed snails, and red-tailed maggots.  I'm sure I didn't find every species in that pond, but I saw all but the maggot larva.    

This snail looks like it's holding a balloon!

I didn't know to check which side the hole is on.  I think this is a left-handed
snail, which breathes air.  (Right -handed snails have gills.)

Backswimmer from the pond.  Shadow of my camera lens?  Fairly tolerant species.

Even another species?

Mysterious newcomer!  I later identified it as a phantom midge.

Next in tolerance are the midge larva, like the phantom midge above, planar (flatworms), black fly larva, and leeches.  Moderately intolerant to pollution are the damselfly nymphs, dragonfly nymphs, sowbug, crankily larvae, clams, and scuds or amphipods.  We found two dragonfly larva and a few scuds.  At the least tolerant tier are the stonefly and mayfly nymphs, riffle beetles (adult and nymph), caddisfly and dobsonfly larva, water penny larva, and the right-handed snail.  Below, see the mayfly nymph!

Mayfly nymph.

This was so exciting and I wanted to do it again with more time to improve the photography.  At Buck Hill, I repeated my collecting with my cleaned, bleached, and rinsed bins to have another look.  I moved the bins to a sunnier spot, still struggling against glare and shadows cast by either me or the sides of the bins.  But I got a few better photos and a few people interested in what I was doing, including an older couple walking their dog and a man from the USFS!  ("No, I wasn't with DEM.  I was just taking pictures before I let them go.  Do you know...")

Another oarman.

Dragonfly larva!

I did the usual sweep through the plants and dump.  With the many oarsmen at Borders, I was looking for movement.  But then I saw something big drop out...  What WAS this?  I saw the long projection and guessed water scorpion, my guides left at home.  And it was!

A water scorpion!  Not actually a scorpion, but a predatory insect
found in slow-moving water.  This guy did not move fast, so I easily
moved him to the clearer tub for the photo.

On to Trustom Pond, a much larger body of water with frogs and painted turtles.  There were oarsmen again, and my first leech!  It was on a turtle we caught and  stubbornly clung first to the turtle's shell, then to the boardwalk, then the tub.  (The turtle snapped the stick with its beak and hissed at us, but after a few quick photos, we let it go.)   Doing more sweeps, I brought up a lot of muck.  As I swished through it, we found many aquatic sowbug (isopods).  There were also dragonfly and mayfly larva.  All three locations were quite clean!

Blood midge.  Very tolerant.

A clam! Moderately intolerant.

Aquatic sowbug.

Eat dead plant matter.

Can indicate a recovering ecosystem.

Got a cool shadow with this backswimmer.

Still dealing with bin shadow.

A whirligig beetle.  Moderate pollution tolerance.  Just briefly out of water.

The LEECH!!!!

Basic rule of thumb is the cleaner the water, the more biodiversity you will see.  The air-breathing species are more tolerant because they don't breathe the water.  Gilled creatures are thus more sensitive.  Seeing a pollution-tolerant species does not mean the water is polluted unless that's all you find.  Here's a good guide: https://scioly.org/wiki/index.php/Water_Quality/Macroorganism_List

But I know you're wondering about that turtle...

"Hiss! Boo! Put me down!!!"

"I still don't like this!"

One more pic!

Back at home!

 If you'd like to schedule a workshop in RI, MA, or CT, message me in the comments or at 15minutefieldtrips @ gmail.com.  (Spaced to stop robots from messaging me, lol!) I also  cover other insects, birds, fish, turtles, seeds, plants, and composting.  See you outside!