Jennings students Abbey Grone and Jacqueline Kaskel interact with Marge VonSossan who used sections of tree trunks showing tree rings to explain the age of trees, climate change indicators and varying denseness and coloration between species.

During the morning assembly, students were energized about the program through a dynamic 45-minute presentation given by Outreach Educator Joe Butler, who introduced the science of ecosystems, animal adaptations and their life cycles and how parts of a biological community are connected within their environment.
The hands-on session in the afternoon lasted 30-45 minutes for each grade. Students had the opportunity to learn how animals use camouflage to survive in their habitat, explore life cycles of different animals, study the impact of changes to plants and animals and discover how different animals see the world. In the hands-on sessions, students informally interact with the activities, spending as little or as much time as they liked at each station.

Kindergarten students seemed to really enjoy the “Pyramid Power” station where they built fungi and bacteria food chains with wood blocks. With the assistance of volunteer Sharon Gasser, the students used rectangular- and triangular-shaped blocks, designed with fungi, animal and land element icons on them, to build a pyramid (ecosystem). The ecosystem is interdependent on all the elements for survival to maintain equilibrium.