Monday, February 18, 2013

Annie's Big Nature Lesson

As part of Annies' Big Nature Lesson (ABNL), Tracey Marchyok and Kevin Dorn had their 4th and 5th grade class at the Leslie Science and Nature Center for the week of February 11-15.

The mission of ABNL is to immerse children, teachers, and parents in the beauty and wonder of the natural world; to engage them in authentic scientific investigations by observing the local ecology, drawing and writing; to nurture citizens who value and protect natural resources; and to build a school-community partnership that inspires responsible environmental stewardship.



On Wednesday, the students came to the golf course and I talked to them about the best management practices that the golf course implements with a goal of being the best environmental stewards that we can. I talked about some of the wildlife that I see on the course and the ways that we foster habitat in out of play areas. I also talked about the Traver Creek Project and afterword, we walked out on the course to look at the progress on the stream restoration.




I also got some samples of the water that the students did some water quality tests on back at the science center.

One great thing that I learned was that some of the students were in Wendy Nagle's class 2 years ago when we put up some bat houses that they made. Many of the kids remembered me and gave me a very warm welcome. Here is a picture of us putting up one of the bat houses on #3.





Friday, February 1, 2013

January 2013 Weather Summary

The highest temperature recorded at Leslie Park Golf Course was 61.8 degrees, at 4:00 AM on January 30th. The lowest temperature recorded was -1.2 degrees (Jan 22nd.) The average temp was 28.7 degrees. Thirteen days had temperatures that never got above the freezing mark. There were 25 days were the low temperature was below 32 degrees.

There was a total of 1.93 inches of rain. The maximum amount of daily rain was 0.68 inches, on Jan 11th. It should be noted that the weather station only records liquid amounts of precipitation. Snow is not always recorded but is sometimes recorded when snow in the collector melts.

The highest sustained windspeed was 38 mph on January 20th. Average windspeed was 4.7 mph.