Dear Friends, 
This week will be mostly spent reading and responding to Mighty Acorn Journals and preparing trip maps for the 6th grade River tour. 
I will provide some very good coffee and tea for anyone that would like to work on these in the mornings this week.  It will be fun.

Also, if you are interested in learning about native ecology and prescription burns:

Riverbank Neighbors and Waters School Gardens will be presenting a workshop:

"Managing Native Gardens in the City: learn how certified crews conduct controlled, permitted burns of small gardens in Chicago."  

Thursday, February 27, 2020
Sulzer Regional Library
6:00 - 8:00

Presentations, Video, and Roundtable 
to share information about this invaluable tool.

Mr. Leki

​Dear Friends, 
With your help, we plowed through our winter field ecology schedule, snowy, mucky, windy, rainy: we did it. It feel so good!

It means winter is waning, 
and spring is nigh!
Gardens, and buds, and returning birds, and sunlight!

So, Wednesday, February 19, 2020,
Room 207, 5th Grade, will finish off our work and adventures in sauganash for this season. We will be cutting brush and piling it up to be burned on a coming Sunday morning (to be announced). Join us! Bus leaves at 9:30. Briefing at 9:30. Back by 12:30.
Wear Boots!!

Mr. Leki

​Dear Friends,
Three Field ecology Sojourns this week:
Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020, 2nd Grade Room 204 will walk to the Riverbank at Berteau to see what they can see, practice journaling and moving stealthily through the  world. Last week we saw a hawk, a gull, woodpeckers, cardinals, junkos, squirrels, goldeneyes, mallards and what we that was a Great Blue Heron but turned out to be two greyish plastic bags caught on branches by the toe of the river.  Please join us. We leave at 8:30 and return by 10:30!

On Wednesday Feb. 12, Room 201, 3rd grade will have their first brush cutting experience at Sauganash. It has been challenging, with great quantities of snow and mud and puddled water making a mess of everything. It was, an experience. And the kids did great and important work with very professional and sharp tools. 
We leave at 9:30 and are back for lunch by 12:30. Come early for a briefing and coffee.

On Thursday, Feb 13, 5th grade, Room 209 Mighty Acorns venture into adventure. The theme of their visit is population dynamics and the effect of unrestrained growth of deer populations. If you join us, you will no doubt get to see some of them. Leave at 9:00. Back at 12:30.

On Friday, Feb. 14, a group organized by the new Sustainability Chief at the BOE will visit Waters to have a look around our beautiful school to get ideas about how to expand composting, recycling and resource conservation to ALL CPS schools.  Feather in out collective hat on Love Day.

Friends of the River's Student Congress is coming up (Saturday Feb. 29.) Our choir and I will be singing there and doing river song workshops. It is a fun and informative way to spend a winter weekend morning. Please consider registering yourself and your child. It's at Von Steuben, so it is within walking distance.  Besides the choir, students and parents will be asked to self organize their attendance. Friends has been a 20+ year partner of the Waters Ecology Program, and I  would love to support this worthy event.

Mr. Leki