2011-2012 PROGRAM IS OFF AND RUNNING!

Very early on Monday, October 24, our intrepid volunteers made the trip to the Bath, NY, hatchery to pick up Brown Trout eggs for 10 of the 14 schools participating this year.

Thanks to Michael, Owen, Josh & Ken, we succesfully delivered eggs to Beverly J. Martin, Belle Sherman, Caroline, Cayuga Heights, Enfield, Fall Creek & South Hill elementary schools in Ithaca; Groton and Newfield Middle Schools and Trumansburg High School.

Additional schools will be receiving Brook Trout eggs in mid-November: Northeast elementary, Boynton Middle School, Lansing High School & Dryden Elementary. Our network of schools is growing each year.

Stay tuned for news and images from each participating school in upcoming weeks, as students get to know their fish!

Enfield Trout Release Day

Belle Sherman Trout Release

58 third graders, 54 brown trout, 65 degrees and sunny, 6 Mile Creek just above Water Street bridge:


We hiked to the creek and worked through 3 different activities. Camille Doucet led us in observing and drawing the place where creek meets land.

We had a woodland scavenger hunt.

We learned to use a kicknet! We found really cool macroinvertebrates and rated the stream health. The stream is a healthy one, so we could release the trout.




Bill gave the signal and we released our trout.

Kids, creek, woods, sun. It doesn't get much better than this!
Thank you Trout in the Classroom--see you next year!

Hey Everyone - Check out our pals The Fly Rods, Friday on the Commons at the Ithaca Festival!

Scientific Illustration

Belle Sherman 3rd grades enjoyed their second visit from visiting artist Camille Doucet. This time children worked on illustrating the life cycle of the brown trout.

Next week, Camille will join us at our Trout Release Party at Six Mile Creek where she will lead us in a "drawing from nature" activity.

A big thank you to the Fine Arts Booster Group for funding Camille's visits to Belle Sherman and South Hill!

Belle Sherman Mini Fishing Day

Belle Sherman's Star Room 3rd grade had a "mini" fishing day in the classroom last Friday.
Matt Herman, co-teacher and TIC mentor brought in a collection of stream critters and fly-tying supplies. Children worked through 3 activity stations:

Stream critters: We got to try out our new stereo-microscopes (THANK YOU, IPEI!) to observe caddisfly larvae and stoneflies. The microscopes magnify 200x... I can't tell you how many kids shrieked when they saw a stonefly through the lenses. It looked big enough to be a SERIOUS predator instead of prey!

Trout observation: careful observation of a fingerling.















Fly-tying: Children looked at pictures of stream critters and chose fur and feathers for Matt to use as he tied flies to match the pictures. We field tested the flies and found the trout were equally interested in Matt's flies as they were in the real thing!

Groton Release

We finally got some good weather and mud-free banks on the Owasco Inlet in Groton to let our Browns go.  We released them this morning in the midst of a midge hatch...nature's reassurance that our little guys will be properly fed!  We're all looking forward to the upcoming Floating Classroom trip!

Stream Insect Studies Underway!

Third graders at Belle Sherman Elementary have been studying macro-invertebrate populations (these are stream insects and crustaceans which are visible without magnification) in stream samples. They are getting help from our amazing Cornell Ed. 2400 interns Amanda and Yuhang.


The students have used their knowledge of insects, combined with dichotomous keys to identify a variety of insect larvae- stoneflies, mayflies, caddisflies and more. Using Isaac Walton League stream survey forms, they have also determined that samples from Enfield Creek and Lick Brook indicate very health streams. Either would be good habitat for trout!

At the end of the class, we feed insect larvae to the trout- and the trout go nuts! Insects are an incredibly important food- as fly-fishermen know- and our trout recognized them right away. There was one exception however... the trout fry were not in the least interested in HORSEFLY larvae, pictured to the right. Why might that be???

TROUT LILIES ARE BLOOMING!

These beautiful flowers are now in full (but brief) bloom throughout our woods and along many streams! We highly recommend are walk in the woods along your favorite stream. Check out the Cayuga Trails Club if you'd like to join a family-friendly hike, or scout the stream where your student will be releasing trout during the coming month!

ART & ILLUSTRATION!

Belle Sherman third grades (and South Hill fourth grades) have had their first session with visiting artist Camille Doucet, thanks to a Fine Arts Booster Group grant. Camille began teaching us the fundamentals of scientific illustration and the art of observing very carefully.
The most interesting thing that happened is that Camille noticed our fish at Belle Sherman were noticeably pinker than those at South Hill. Could it be our purple-red tank background? We'll observe our fish again after break with Yuhang and Amanda and officially compare the colors from "before" and "after."