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Mercer Creek Connections Visit the Field Station

Posted on Monday, March 23, 2009

When 20 fifth- and sixth-graders decide to make connections, they really do that. Sunday afternoon, March 15, was the time for the Mercer Elementary Creek Connections club to visit the Field Station for hands-on experiences with nature.

These enthusiastic kids were given gloves and told to "go to it" with hand sorting the food waste that came directly from the Kiwanis Club pancake breakfast in New Wilmington the day before. Oh, the looks of surprise when the weighed bags were dumped out for them to sort! What can and cannot be composted was the first lesson: plastic butter cups and plastic water bottles, NO; uneaten pancakes, paper cups, napkins and even paper placemats, YES! They didn't count the little butter cups but there must have been at least 300 for them to remove to a can labeled TRASH. The plastic bottles were moved to another can labeled RECYCLABLES. And when they had finished the sorting, they had lesson number two: figure out the amount of actual COMPOSTABLES. Before long they came to this conclusion: weigh the castaways in cans and subtract this from the original weight! They guessed correctly as to which group would "win": compostables, of course. Sixth-grade arithmetic solved the percentage problem: 76% of the total food waste discarded could be composted. And it was added to the growing piles at the Field Station. The trash was trashed and the recyclables were recycled. Those were the practical lessons of the day!

Then the MECC kids hiked. Where? To the Little Neshannock Creek. After all, these are kids who make CREEK connections. Their club meets twice monthly at the Munnell Run Farm in Mercer County. They are part of the Creek Connections program at Allegheny College. In warmer weather these "creekers" spend several Saturday afternoons a month at the farm studying Munnell Run. There they collect macroinvertabretes and conduct chemical tests of the water to determine the stream's quality.

They also participate in the "Teracycle & Honest Kids Drink Pouch Brigade" for which they collect juice pouches during lunch periods in school. More than 1,000 juice pouches were collected last year. "Honest Kids" donates 2 cents per Honest Kids Drink Pouch and 1 cent per regular juice pouch to the non-profit organization of the group's choice. The MECC money is being donated to Munnell Run Farm, a 163-acre working farm that is also a non-profit agriculture and ecology education center located just North of Mercer.

MECC was organized and is led by three volunteer educators. All three are scientists as well as mothers to Mercer Elementary School students: Lori Micsky is the chemical hygiene officer at Westminster College; Joy Strain is a part-time biology instructor at Slippery Rock University; and Kathy Shaffer is a part-time chemistry instructor at Slippery Rock University.

This group, and other similar ones in our area and around the country, represents the future. Hats off to them all!

Clarence Harms, Director
Field Station
harmsc@westminster.edu
724-946-8520

Mercer Elementary Creek Connections group
Mercer Elementary Creek Connections group hand sorting leftovers