Every year from February through April, the Splash Education Center at Mather Field welcomes more than 70 classes of 4th and 5th graders on their vernal pool field trips. These field trips give students the chance to get up-close-and-personal with the animals and plants they've been studying in the Splash curriculum, Life in Our Watershed: Investigating Vernal Pools.
The field trip is hands-on, interactive, and provides lots of opportunities for the students to share their vernal pool knowledge with each other, the Splash field guides, and the parent chaperones. This integration of classroom and experiential learning is a unique and exciting aspect of the Splash Elementary Program.
Each class is broken into three groups of 8 to 12 students and each group is led by a trained vernal pool guide. Half the field trip is spent rotating through the learning centers inside the Splash Center: the watershed station, the microscope station, and Critterville. The other half of their field trip is spent exploring the spectacular vernal pools scattered throughout the grasslands at Mather Field. For more information about the timing and content of the field trip, please click on the links below.
