If you are a teacher or a parent wanting to get your kids interested in the outdoors, there are resources for you. Nate Drag is a great lakes literacy specialist with the Sea Grant of New York and he explains what is available. Nate says he has so much stuff available for teachers, parents, home schoolers, and anyone who is interested in learning about the great lakes.
The is one activity called, How well do you know the Great Lakes? It has kids learning how much water is in each of the lakes, amount of shoreline, the amount of fish in each of the lakes and the amount of people. Nate says it’s fun because for instance Lake Erie, the closest lake to us, is a small lake compared to Lake Superior but actually, the most fish of any great lake are in Lake Erie and, there are more people around Lake Erie than any other lake.
Another set-up shows fishopedia. It is all different types of native fish to the great lakes. They have life-size cutouts so kids can understand how big certain fish get like the lake trout and salmon. Also, to go along with fishopedia is something called attack pack, which focuses on invasive species, things that have come from around the world that we really don’t want here that are hurting some of these native species. They also have preserved samples like rusty crayfish and zebra mussels.
If you would like access to the NY Sea Grant educational resources, go to seagrant.sunysb.edu
You can also call the Sea Grant Buffalo Office at 716-645-3610
