Watershed
The Adopt-A-Watershed and Salmon Program

In the end we will conserve
only what we love.
We will love
only what we understand.
We will understand
only what we are taught.
The fourth grade “Salmon in
the Classroom” program began in 1990 when Terry Thorsos, a
Wilder Mom, wrote and received the school’s first grant.
Wanting to expand the program to include the rest of the
students, the Adopt-a-Watershed Program was started in 1994
by Maggie Windus, also a Wilder mom. Her goal was to
“provide an enriched educational environment where students
could experience nature, hands-on science, and learn the
importance and interconnectedness of life in the watershed”.
Through a series of grants she was able to get the program
up and running. Maggie wrote the curriculum to include K- 6th
grades and over the next eight years taught and ran the
program with the help of parent volunteers.
Watershed
instruction happens three times a year, fall, winter and
spring. There are two weeks where children receive an in
class lesson. The following two weeks, we go out to the
watershed outside the schools back gate and perform the
tasks we learned. We monitor Colin Creek and Big Bear Creel
Wetlands #26. We perform eight water quality and habitat
type tests at seven sites within our watershed - dissolved
oxygen, pH, flow & velocity, macroinvertebrate pollution
tolerance, stream/wetland surveys, wildlife and plant
inventories and photo documentation. Our kindergartner and
first graders study colors and shapes in nature,
living/nonliving in the watershed, the importance of stream
temperature, and participate in spider and seed hunts.
The fourth graders study the
life cycle of the salmon by raising their own salmon from
eggs. In the fall they visit the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery
and perform a stream survey while observing spawning King
and Sockeye salmon in nearby Cottage Lake or Bear Creek. In
the spring they release their salmon into Colin Creek that
is located in our watershed out behind our school.
The watershed program
continues to be administered by a small group of volunteer
parents. Each watershed season over 100 parent volunteers
come out to help the students with their watershed tasks,
many come more than once. The program is sustained by the
generous contributions of the Wilder PTSA.
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