While the 8th graders are in Pine Canyon their focus is allot about the animals. They have scat finders, bone collectors, trail finders. Although they focus a lot on the animals they still do other things like; recording tracks, reading topo. maps, and database management. They have a variety of tools like NatureTracker, calipers, tape measures, and other handheld devices.

The 3rd year high school Spanish class is helping us out in two ways. First, they are translating NatureMapping wildlife fact sheets into Spanish and those will be on the website. They are finding out a lot about the Spanish language and the English language with this project. Second, they are reconstructing a coyote skeleton that we found as road kill outside of town. This picture shows a reconstruction project from another school. Right now, they are working on cleaning all those stinky bones.

Our school has the library in the center with classrooms all around it. On the outside walls of the library is painted a mural of our area. It includes the Cascade Mts., Badger Mt, the Waterville Plateau and Douglas Creek. This year student art from each class will be added to the mural to show the wildlife of the area. We also plan to make display boxes in the big windows for samples to be kept in.
This is a sample of two pages in our field guide. Each class will contribute 4 pages about 3 animals.

Some students will be producing a map of the school grounds and the town of Waterville that shows where people can find examples of native plantings that don’t use much water. You see, even though our town is called Waterville, we sometimes have a water shortage and we want to show people one way to not use so much water.

I have been working with our technology mentor, Jessica, to make the Rattlesnake field guide pages. She also taught us to read township range and section before the farmers came in. Another mentor, Taylor, is helping me learn all about using ArcView. These girls get one middle school credit for their work.