Hometown waters: Exploring and mapping life in vernal ponds

For 2023 - 2024, thanks to Cell Signaling for sponsoring this program, and the Beverly Cultural Council (a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency) for supporting transportation costs!

2023-2024

In 2024, all second grade students within the Beverly public school district participated in Hometown Waters, exploring the vernal ponds and habitats at Camp Paradise in Beverly. Outfitted with wading boots, binoculars, and nets students were eager to head down to the water. The children explored the site during two visits to Camp Paradise and conducted project work in their classes. Many of their projects were shared at Kestrel’s Student Work Showcase in the spring.

During the visits, the students explored the overall property and described the differences between the permanent and vernal ponds and swamp, wading into the central pond with nets and carefully drawing and describing their finds, and identifying and discussing different amphibians and invertebrates. They heard the breeding calls of different frog species and found the eggs of spotted salamanders. Students also managed to catch bullfrogs and eastern newts and document many invertebrates they had never seen before, including caddisfly and damselfly and dragonfly larvae, water scorpions, and fishflies. Their visit also included mapping and identification games and a station for reading storybooks about amphibian migration and breeding. The students carefully recorded their finds on data sheets we made for them, which teachers collected for further analysis in the classroom. During their second visit, students could observe the changes to the site over time, such as the progression of some of the breeding animals from one stage of their lives to another. For example, we may find amphibian eggs during one visit and larvae during the subsequent visit, or we may find mayfly larvae during one visit and a hatch of adults on a subsequent visit. 

2022-2023

The 2022-2023 program was generously funded by:

Hometown Waters in 2022-2023 was a partnership between Beverly Cove School and Pathways for Children in Gloucester. This project-based learning experience engaged young children in exploring and documenting life in vernal ponds in their own community, and in sharing their finds with the public.

Beverly Cove School’s Second Graders created Maps of Camp Paradise, highlighting three different ponds on the property. The students visited the ponds both in the early and late spring, and observed, identified, and compared the life within them. They decided to make their maps three dimensional and in some cases, to add symbol keys, to help viewers gather information from the maps. These very different pieces are all collaboratively - designed maps created of the same City of Beverly owned public open space.

Pathways for Children Gloucester investigated the vernal pond at the end of Stillington Road in Gloucester, part of The Trustees Ravenswood Park. They visited both in the early spring and late summer, and thus were able to observe wood frogs and spotted salamanders, among other creatures, in their egg and larval stages, as well as adult frogs. Their completed pieces are clay models of the pond and the life they observed.