Release the Beasts! (Or...bye bye salmon)

 Last Monday, we released our salmon! The entire 4th grade went to the Ada Covered Bridge. When we got there, we ate lunch and then released our salmon. We went by classes down to the water. Our class went first. We received a cup with one salmon in it. First, some of us took the cup and placed it in the water, letting the water from the cup mix with the river water so the salmon could get used to the temperature. Then we poured the cup gently into the river, well MOST of us did. Some of the salmon went easily down the river, and others? Not so much. Anneke's kept jumping into her elbow as she was holding the cup! Some went the wrong way or tried to swim back to person releasing it! 

 

 Once we were done releasing the salmon, we went to different stations. The first station we went to was fly fishing. Mr. Miller brought rods and taught us how to fly fish. The next station was playing Sharks and Minnows. The third station was Salmon Survival, a Life Cycle of Salmon game, but it was extremely impossible to win! Adrianne, Anneke and Marylee all made it to the third stage (smolt) and Gibson made it to the 2nd stage, but Thomas never made it past the first stage. Henry S. made it to spawn!

 The last station was looking for insects and other microorganisms on rocks, sticks and wood from the river. We found two parasites, lots of blood suckers, and a couple bigger insects. We found the most from the rotting wood. We had to scratch, scrape, look in the muck and pull apart the rotting wood to find what we were looking for.

It was an awesome day! We are happy for our salmon, hopeful they don't die, and sad that they are gone from our science lab. :( 

Our advice for next year's bloggers: Assign roles, such as Title Maker. (That was Thomas this year!)

Adrianne, Anneke, Gibson, Marylee, and Thomas 

2017