Field Trip: San Antonio River Authority (SARA)

This was a half day field trip to here from SARA employees about how to keep the river clean and the wildlife in and around it.  They split into two groups, 2nd grade and below being in the little kid group.  This meant that Drew, Judah, and Bob were in that group while Isaac went to the other group.  I, obviously, had to stay with the little guys.

Miss Minna was our "tour guide" and she is from India.  She grew to love animals and the environment when she was a child in India and her father was in charge of protecting the tiger population.  She also explained to the moms about the park we were in and how it was built to be self-sustaining, down to the gazebo roof funneling rain water into their underground tank to use to water the plants with in dryer times.  They chose all native plants for the park so they would be used to a dry, hot climate.  I thought all that was very interesting.

The part I wasn't a fan of was her delivery of the "protect the river quality" message.  The message is a good one, but the way she went about it, I was really wondering if some of the little ones were going to start crying.  She had a fake fish floating in a fish bowl and had all kinds of cups filled with various liquids and solids sitting nearby.  The fish was named Freddy the Catfish and "talked."  We were to imagine that Freddy was traveling down the river in our story.  First someone cuts down all the shady trees and bark and dirt get washed into the river (dumped into the fish bowl for demonstration.)  Freddy is hot and sad now.  Then a cow from a farm leaves Freddy some "presents" and they get bacteria into the river making Freddy even sadder.  The story continues with green chemicals from a golf course, oil from a bad daddy that poured it down the storm drain, and trash blowing in from a park.  Pour Freddy is getting sadder and now having a hard time breathing with all the oil caked on his gills.  In this dramatized story, Freddy's fish bowl looks like a cesspool now and he's crying and gasping for air.  It was a little much is all I'm saying.

The walk to and down the river was fun because Miss Minna had crazy eyesight and knowledge about the species of everything from butterflies to hummingbirds to plants.  Mid sentence, she'd stop and say, "Look at that long tailed butterfly!" and it would have flitted across her peripheral vision in the distance.  Pretty impressive.

We had to leave afterwards and miss the picnic lunch because Hannah got sick and the school called me to come get her.  We were clear across town, so we had to get going.