Bea and Harriet had an especially long winter break this year—two weeks and two and a half days. (Not that I was counting!) But for real, the number of school days off this year feels a little intense, in terms of planning for things other than Bob’s Burgers marathons—in Chatham County, we’ve got three four-day weekends in January alone.
So this post is about some winter activities that will keep your wild kids busy, hopefully somewhat independently.
We started our break with a crafternoon, in which Harriet and her buddies made adorable treasure boxes:
We’ve also been doing puzzles. One of the best presents we got (for Richard) was a roll-up puzzle mat, which allows you to store puzzles when you’re not working on them. We started with this 200-piece cat puzzle:
(We’re working up to this 1,000-piece Catsquach puzzle we got at McIntyre’s.)
We’ve been going on a lot of hikes, too—winter is terrific for hiking without fear of chiggers or ticks, and the brush die-back means that you can go many more places. If you have muddy areas, or streambanks or riverbanks check for animal tracks. We were excited to see these bobcat tracks near our favorite swim spot:
On the last day of break, we took a long hike with four friends.
There was much leaping across streams and climbing of trees. Wild girls!
The next day, after school, Bea and Harriet and I walked the same route, this time with a trash bag and Marine Debris Tracker installed on my phone. Marine Debris Tracker is one of the many citizen science projects we’ve learned about from our good friends Chelsea and River.
Chelsea and River are big-time citizen scientists, who participate in bird counts and squirrel counts, make sourdough for science, and collect all sorts of information for ongoing scientific research. They’ve taught us that citizen science is an easy, fun way for parents and kids to spend time together. Mostly, it’s noticing things, taking photos, and sending in simple data collection through phones or tablets.
You’re probably familiar with the Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count, for example, which for more than a hundred years has helped scientists understand changes in bird population. (There’s also the upcoming Backyard Bird Count February 16-19).
Marine Debris Tracker is a great project for us, since we like to be on the go. It was founded in 2010 by Dr. Jenna Jambeck, a professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Georgia, and Dr. Kyle Johnson in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They predicted that as humans increased our production and consumption of single-use plastics, from water bottles to food wrappers, we’d see more and more plastic in nature and the oceans. They were right–every minute, the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic is dumped in the world’s oceans.
Keeping track of all this litter sounds impossible (and scary), but when we all work together we can give scientists important information that will help all of us.
Marine Debris Tracker data tells scientists:
-How much, and what kind of trash, is out there in different communities
-Where ocean debris comes from
This data helps scientists figure out how to help communities reduce plastic consumption and litter, so that we can have healthier waterways and oceans.
Today, Marine Debris Tracker connects thousands of volunteers, all across the planet. Their information goes to NOAA and participating environmental groups, and is shared with members.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Download the free Marine Debris Tracker app on your smartphone.
2. Find a friend, and gather your supplies: garden gloves (protect your hands), a big bag (you never know how much trash you’ll find). Wear comfortable shoes and clothes that can get dirty.
3. Choose your route! Note: it does not need to be near a stream or the ocean. Because all pollution starts upstream, wherever you are and whatever information you gather is important.
4. Open the app, and log into your tracking session. You can choose “quick track” which provides a general list of trash items, or “select an organization,” which gives you access to debris lists from organizations in your area. This more customized tracking system also contributes your data to these larger organizations.
5. Decide who will take responsibility for each task, or take turns. When Bea and Harriet and I collected trash after school this week, Bea held the cell phone, I held the trash bag, and Harriet and I collected the garbage. Harriet and I called out what we found (“foam scrap! two straws!” “plastic bottle!”), and Bea tapped the categories and numbers into the phone.
5. No cell reception? No problem! Marine Debris Tracker is set up to collect and store information on the go. Once you’re back in range, you can upload the data.
6. At the beginning or end of your route, take a photo of your location. That will also be uploaded into the tracker.
A cool feature: Marine Debris Tracker will also show you how far you walked and how many pieces of trash you picked up. It will even create pie charts representing percentages of each kind of trash (not quite as pretty as Madison’s charts). On our first walk (4.6 kilometers), we picked up 60 pieces of trash, more than 80% of it plastic.
A side benefit: we’re pretty big trespassers, and even though we stay far from people’s houses we’re fairly often on other people’s property. Doing something helpful and purposeful like trash collection makes it seem less likely that anyone will have a problem with our perigrinations.
So we’re curious, Frog Troublers: have you participated in any citizen science projects, like bird counts? Would you try Marine Debris Tracker? (Seems like a GREAT class project.)
On the calendar: Next Saturday, Bea and I are definitely planning to see our good friend Jill McCorkle read from her outstanding new story collection, Old Crimes, at McIntyre’s Books. January 13 from 11-12! Be there!
P.S. Look for a reveal of the cover of Plant Pets very soon!
Thank you for another informative FTT. I can't wait to try out the Marine Debris Tracker with my grandson next time we got out walking. We have been picking up trash since he was very small! Participating in national data collection to help the environment is the icing on the cake, and can't wait to see the graphs and charts. My love to all!
Thanks for the info on Marine Debris Tracker!