Sixty five 8th grade environmental science students from Krueger Middle School in Michigan City recently made a working field trip to the Prairie and to the Butterfly Meadow at Foundations Meadows, of the Valpo Parks system.
Krueger is an environmental science magnet middle school and has begun the process of turning their 101 acres of property into an outdoor environmental learning center. So far they have planted native prairie species seed, tilled and removed sections of the schools lawn to convert back to prairie, and even conducted a prescribed burn in the spring of 2013.
During the field trip, students collected seed from several plant species that will be used to seed areas of their plots this fall. They also identified native plants species, participated in a plant adaptation scavenger hunt, and performed an insect sweep to discover what kinds of pollinators and other insects live in the prairie ecosystem.