The Catskill Area Homeschool Network
New York

We are a homeschooling group in the Hudson Valley of New York State.  We gathered our project data at a park in Marbletown, NY on Oct. 24.  It was a cloudy and very windy autumn day.  The temperature was 49-50F making it quite chilly.  Nine children participated.  We made 3 squares in different locations in the park, one under a tree, one near the waterfront beach area, and one in a playing field. 

Before we started, the children were asked whether they thought other schools around the world would find the same kinds of things in their squares.  Four said similar things would be found.  Two said there would be some similarity.  One said we would not find the same things and another said there would be more pollution elsewhere. 

Unfortunately, we did not find many animals that day.  We figured it was due to the unusually cold weather.  We were also surprised at the litter we found, in particular, the organic chocolate wrapper.  It seems to show that people in the area are concerned about their health but not the environment. 

 The following are final reports from three of the participating children.

Tree Square

Report by Marley

Our square had a tree growing in it and there were leaves of different kinds on the ground: maple and willow. We found 21 mushrooms, 3 acorns and a twig. We also found a strawberry plant, plantains and weeds. The tree that was growing in our square was a hemlock. The living creature we found was an ant which was eating another dead bug.  As far as non living things go, we found some rocks, dirt, and sand. The man-made products we found were a cigarette butt, a seltzer can, a plastic juice container and an organic chocolate bar wrapper.
The schools that we compared our square to were The Sullivan School in Yokusoka, Japan and Harold Sheppard School in Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, Canada.

Our findings were very similar to the Harold Sheppard School. They had mushrooms, an acorn, maples and berries and so did we. They also saw plastic wrappers. The Sullivan School only had three things in common with our square: ants, weeds and dirt.

We conclude that Quebec is more similar to us than Japan. Had it been Summer or Spring we would have seen many similar living things to theirs.

The Waterfront Square

Report by Lachlan

The square we studied was on a river bank and was slightly moist. As might be expected there were a lot of rocks and gritty sand. We noticed evidence of recent flooding in the area. On the largest the rock we saw graffiti. The smaller rocks were mostly gray and a dark purplish. Some of the rocks were quartz and conglomerate rocks. In this area were several trees and so we found many leaves: sycamore, willow, maple, sumac, birch and wild rose. Some of the leaves were fresh but many were dried and decaying. There were also many sprouts growing in the square. We also saw red fuzzy pods from the sumacs, a few dried rosehips and some visible roots. There was one small dark spider and several insect holes.
We compared our findings to the St. Joseph School in Racine, Wisconsin. It was interesting that they found so much still alive like ants, worms, beetles and flying bugs while we only found one spider. We could only speculate that there were ants living in our square from the visible small holes in the dirt. There were many leaves that had fallen in our square from trees in the area but the only tree we had in common with St. Joseph's was a maple. While both our square and St. Joseph's had dirt and small rocks, our square didn't support much plant life compared to theirs which had a variety of wildflowers. Perhaps the high waters on our riverbank washed away any seeds that may have landed there so they didn't have a chance.
 

Field Square

Report by David
 

In the playing field we observed an ant and its nest made from sand.  We also found a white spider.  There was plenty of green and yellow grass.  Throughout the grass there was some weeds such as clover and dandelion.  There were a number of dead leaves from maple, willow and cottonwood trees on the ground.  The ground was brown dirt.

The schools we compared this square to were Saratoga Independent School in Saratoga, NY and St. Francis de Sales School in Las Vegas, Nevada.  The Saratoga School is not far from our location and, as we expected, it had a lot of similar things.  Like us, they saw ants but they also saw a lot more animals such as caterpillars, crickets, frogs and a shrew.  Perhaps this is because it was a warmer day when they did their observations.  They also had grass, weeds and leaves like our square.  Some of the leaves were colorful and some were old and decaying, but they don't say what kind of trees they came from.  St. Francis de Sales also had very few animals like our location.  I don't believe it was because of the cold though.  Perhaps they had few animals because it's hot and dry there?  Like us, they did observe some ants and they had clover, weeds, grass and leaves .  However, unlike us, they have pink grass!  We would really like to see that! 

 We conclude that there are many similarities around the world but every location is unique in some way or another.

 Here are our pictures; there are two for each square - tree, waterfront, field.