By Cecilia Marrero

Place yourself in the forest and look down at the bare soil along the trail.  Look carefully, you will see animal prints on the ground in different patterns, shapes, and sizes.  But do you know what animals have passed by?  Where were they going and what they might be doing?  This Artscapes lesson seeks to elevate our outdoor awareness in order to help us make more accurate observations of the natural world around us.

During this after school activity, Darryl Haddock, educational director at OAC (Outdoor Activity Center), gave the kids the opportunity to explore their own awareness of animals during their interpretative hike.  After several observations were made, the kids made the connection of the common sight of dog prints and their urban location.  It also became apparent to everyone that because OAC is surrounded by the Richland Hills community, the numerous dog paw prints were most likely from neighborhood dogs. Not only does our sight allow us to draw conclusions about our observations, but our sense of hearing ties together the idea that we are not always alone in the forest.  Quieting our minds for a moment and concentrating on listening to our outdoor surroundings quickly reveals just how many diverse sounds are found in nature.  By focusing on the sounds, we can increase our awareness. Sound tends to make our sight observations more accurate, and we can draw from our senses in order to avoid a possible bad scenario in our environment and have a pleasant experience instead.

As we stepped into the classroom, another lesson unfolded as each individual became more accustomed to prints of other animals.  Georgia Educator Sarah Collman presented a footprints-themed activity as a way of demonstrating the general relationship between the forest and its animal inhabitants.  A footprint on a painted landscape represented an animal’s niche, a place of purpose for an organism. In essence, the kids learned through different observations how we, as responsible stewards, are a part of a larger element by identifying with the animals that surround them.  We were all better able to understand and appreciate our time in nature and increase our respect for the gift of our natural world.

By Cecilia Marrero

When you see a frog swiftly snatch an insect for a quick meal, a squirrel clutching a nut, or a colony of critters eating away at a piece of dead wood, they are all contributing more to our environment than many of us realize. The goal of the Food Web activity is to give the kids an understanding of the intricate web of relationships in the natural world as it focuses on the community of animals found at the Outdoor Activity Center and the food web they sustain.

In this activity, the delicately balanced energy exchange that exists between the different species found in the natural world is simplified by starting off with an interpretive hike at the OAC followed by a hands-on demonstration of what we see and hear in our local environmental communities. In the classroom, we gave the kids a specific animal or bacteria typically identified as having a major role in the food web as one of the following: producer, primary consumer, secondary consumer, herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, and decomposer. This activity allowed the children to imagine what animal occupies which trophic level in a food chain.

Trophic levels are the feeding positions that an organism occupies in a food chain. As producers, plants form the first trophic level.  Herbivores, animals that eat only plants, are primary consumers that form the second trophic level. The third and fourth trophic levels are formed by carnivores, animals that eat other animals, and omnivores, animals who eat both plants and animals. Bacteria and fungi are decomposers and they feed off decaying matter breaking it down further into fine organic material.

After working so diligently, the kids compiled all of their artwork to create a webbed layout of their interconnected food web. This activity taught us to see animals and bacteria from a different perspective and to understand that each living organism plays an important role far beyond our general scope of the environment.