EdVentures@Ijams home-schooled classes search the ponds

Ijams is, what it always was...the best place for kids to connect with nature. 

See it. Touch it. Hear it. 

In late March we held three amphibian classes in our EdVentures@Ijams series for home-schooled kids and their parent/teachers. (One teacher/Mom and her students actually drove from Athens to be part of the EdVenture.)

After an indoor formal class on the uniqueness of amphibians, their habitat requirements and their special place in the environment, the junior naturalists explored three different ponds at the nature center and found oodles of Eastern red-spotted newts (Good old Notophthalmus viridescens). We're like a comic-con for the finned-tailed salamanders. And our master critter-catcher Jacob from Kingston caught two giant spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum).

The two yellow-spotted salamanders were the biggest things we found. Wow! They were whoppers!  

Junior naturalists have been coming to Ijams for decades to connect to the peace and tranquility of the real world (as opposed to the violence of today's virtual world.) It all began with day camps for Girl Scouts on the property of H.P. and Alice Ijams in the summer of 1923. Jacob caught the two spotted salamanders in the same pond that the Ijams cow used to drink from, talk about legacy.

This was the fifth in a series of eight classes. Next month the homeschoolers learn about trees. In May it's reptiles.

- Stephen Lyn Bales

- Supplied photos by Teacher/Mom Cheri Hall