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Watson students on the right track
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Neighbors | Sarah Foor .Austintown Township Park director Joyce Gottron visited Watson Elementary on Feb. 16 to teach the school’s first-graders about animal tracks and prints.
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Making prints included lots of teamwork. Anthony Shepas (left) held the deer tracks stencil while Clayton Marcum (right) colored in the tracks.
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Once all the students were done coloring their tracks, the long stretch of white paper looked like animal tracks in fresh snow. In this case, the tracks were rabbit tracks down a stretch of "snow."
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Tessa Helminak (center) helped Gottron during her presentation. Her reward for all the help was coloring in her own animal tracks.
By SARAH FOOR
“Use your imagination and picture your backyard covered in freshly fallen snow,” Austintown Township Park supervisor Joyce Gottron challenged the first-grade students at Watson Elementary on Feb. 17.
“When you walk through that new snow, what kind of mark will you leave?”
“Tracks!” piped in first-grader Dominic Hughes.
Gottron used the correct answer from Hughes to teach the children that all animals leave signs showing where they’ve been and where they’re going.
“In the park’s ‘Animal Tracks’ program, I like to focus on animals that live right here in Austintown,” Gottron shared between her discussions to the first-grade classrooms. “If the kids know what they’re looking for and look hard enough, they can find these tracks in their own backyards.”
The focus of the presentation centered on deer and rabbits — animals that are plentiful in the Mahoning Valley. Gottron gave useful tips to the students about tracking the animals, like sharing that rabbits often run in circles to confuse their trail.
Gottron also told the students to remember the size of the animal they may be looking for if they start searching for tracks of wild turkeys, dogs, raccoons and cats — animals all present in Austintown.
The park supervisor then laid down a long sheet of white paper that she told the students to imagine as fresh snow. The students used teamwork to color in deer and rabbit tracks, with one student holding a stencil and the other coloring in the tracks.
“I love that the students get to know more about the wildlife around them,” said Gottron after the program. “It’s a hands-on, sensory project that really makes Austintown come alive.”