Want More Information?

Visit webpages from previous campers at the Oak Lake Science Camp Website and last year's blog or email Kendra at kendra.hill@sdstate.edu.

Thursday Aug. 7th

We woke up to the regular breakfast of burnt toast, yogurt, and cereal. The only difference is that Mary was teaching yoga to Madelynn, Sadie, and Marie. After the yoga we walked down to the classroom for a lesson on woody plants or trees by Jerry Krueger. He took us down to the canoe dock to take tree samples. 2 out of 3 tools to take the tree samples clogged. One was because of Sadie's tree. The other was Patrick's tree. We then walked back to the classroom to unclog the tools. Next was lunch. It was the very appetizing sandwiches. We are getting tired of sandwiches. We then had Prairie mammals with Laura Dixon (or "LD"). We caught three 13 line ground squirrels, and 1 deer mouse. We checked the gender of the ground squirrel before letting it go. The funny part of having the ground squirrel in the cage is it kept running into the sides. We then went to check on the turtle trap which looked like it was broken by a muskrat. We then dissected owl pellets. Then we had free time for 2 hours and like usual we worked on our projects. Next we had dinner of Spaghetti and Garlic bread. We also discovered that Brenden and Bryant had poison ivy. We then worked on our projects again and on our web page until 9. Then the three girls that had yoga in the morning will do yoga again. We will then go to bed at 11sh. Good night and farewell.

Wednesday August 6th

Eating cold cereal in the morning is better than eating bugs, which was what we were searching for after breakfast. We were given a net and a jar with poison in it to catch insects with. Our hike took us down into the woodland and into a large meadow at the bottom of the hill. We were pretty successful with the bugs, however only Doug and Bryant caught butterflies. Some bad luck happened, though. While we were resting in the shade, Bryant realized that he had lost his field notebook somewhere in the meadow. He offered to catch a butterfly and give the finder of the book one of Patrick's honey buns. It hasn't turned up yet. When we got back to the classroom, most of the bugs weren't dead, yet, so we went and ate sandwiches and chips for lunch (again). After lunch we broke up into 2 teams and split up to look for plants to use for dye. The first group walked down the hill and hunted for Missouri goldenrod. They were pretty successful. The second group drove down the hill and picked chokecherries. After a little while, we flip flopped and the first group went down to pick chokecherries and the second group walked up to pick Missouri goldenrod. Lucky for the first group, they got to ride back up the hill in the truck while the second group hiked back up. After chopping and boiling and preparing the dye, we picked a pattern for our bandanas and left them to sit in the dye. Next, we went off and set a turtle trap baited with chicken livers (eww!). Then, we set traps in the forest and the prairie for small mammals. The forest group had to be careful, though, because of all the stinging nettle and other plants in the forest. Supper was pizza night (along with breadsticks and cinnamon sticks). It was so much better than the tuna casserole that Brenden had said we were having (ha ha). We also deprived Bryant of his juice boxes (Reason: if he has too many, he gets very, very x3000 hyper. Just like Patrick). Then we came back up here to finish identifying our plants, pinning and identifying our insects. Also, we needed to update our webpages. When we get back to the bunk house, we'll probably stay up late playing games like we have for the past couple nights and wake up tired, but ready for another day learning about nature.

Tuesday, August 5th

We started the day with a wonderful breakfast consisting of cereal, granola bars, and yogurt. At 9:00 a.m., we headed down to the field station to learn about birds from Dr. Jensen. He taught how to set up and take down the nets that we use to catch the birds with. After a few minutes, we had already caught two Least Flycatchers, two common yellow-throat warblers and an American goldfinch. Then we learned how to identify the birds' age, gender, and molting stages. After a delicious (NOT) of ham and/or turkey sandwiches, chips, and fruit roll ups we then went to the lake with our homemade nets and caught lots of different kinds of water bugs including water scorpions, craw fish, clams, and snails. We then went out on the boat and used an Eckman dredge and pulled stuff off the bottom of the lake. After we were done with all of our work we were able to go swimming. After a supper of chicken, potato wedges, and cookies, we went back to the classroom to work on our websites and to start identifying our pressed plants.

Monday, August 4th

Today was a good first day of camp. It started with breakfast at 8:00. We had cereal, toast and fruit juice. Then the first activity was plant and vegetation walk were we collected plants for our plant press that we made yesterday night. After that came lunch, which was sandwiches, chips and milk. Soon after we went back to the lab/classroom for a GPS and GIS activity. What we did was go outside and each group had a GPS and we had to go and find we bag of candy, also while we were at the candy point we used a kesler to measure the humidity wind speed and temperature of the air.
Next we went out to the lake with our secchi disk that we also made last night. We used them to see how transparent the water was, we also got to swim afterwards. Finally it was dinner time it was tater tot hot dish!!! Then to finish off the day we went back to the lab to write our web pages and look at interesting stuff that we got in the lake. Soon came bed time but before came root beer floats!! YEA!!! All and all it was a great but exhausting day.

Brenden Raizola and Taylor Schlotterbeck

Sunday Evening (Day 1)

Nathan and I were excited for our 8 campers to arrive this afternoon. This evening we built various equipment to be used for the week. We built secchi disks, plant presses, and collection boxes for insects. We can't wait to use them!