Take a Child Outside Week, Sept. 24-30
Saturday September 27 is National Public Lands Day.
Ecosystem Facelift
Iowa’s landscape has changed through out the years, Iowa was originally all prairies. Now only a few native prairies remain however, the effort to restore prairies is full force. Check out your local county conservation board to find the native and restored prairies near you.
To explore this topic Project WILD offers the activity Ecosystem Facelift. This activity helps identify ways to restore your community’s ecosystem.
Modification: The students can go out side and use digital cameras to take picture of local plant and animals to use in the activity.
Book List
Grades PreK-2
Cherry, L. 2002. A River Ran Wild : An Environmental History. New York: Voyager Books/Libros Viajeros.
Gibbons, G. 1997. Nature's Green Umbrella : Tropical Rain Forests. New York: Harper Trophy.
Kalman, B. 1997. What Is a Biome? Boston: Crabtree Company.
Locker, T. 2001. Sky Tree : Seeing Science Through Art. New York: HarperCollins.
Grades 3-5
Cherry, L. 2002. A River Ran Wild : An Environmental History. New York: Voyager Books/Libros Viajeros.
Gibbons, G. 1997. Nature's Green Umbrella : Tropical Rain Forests. New York: Harper Trophy.
Kalman, B. 1997. What Is a Biome? Boston: Crabtree Company.
Locker, T. 2001. Sky Tree : Seeing Science Through Art. New York: HarperCollins.
Grades 6-8
Lane, B. 2005. Ecology. Grand Rapids: Dorling Kindersley, Incorporated.
Grades 9-12
Collard, S. B. 2005. The Prairie Builders : Reconstructing America's Lost
Grasslands. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company Trade & Reference Division.
Lane, B. 2005. Ecology. Grand Rapids: Dorling Kindersley, Incorporated.
Novacek, M. J. 2007. Terra : Our 100-Million-Year-Old Ecosystem--and the Threats That Now Put It at Risk. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Our Human Planet : Summary for Decision-Makers. New York: Island P.
Peterson, D. 2004. Exploration of the Tetons. New York: Farcountry P.
Reilly, K. M. 2008. Planet Earth : 25 Environmental Projects You Can Build Yourself. New York: Nomad P.
Shirley, S. 1994. Restoring the Tallgrass Prairie : An Illustrated Manual for Iowa and the Upper Midwest. New York: University of Iowa P.
Smith, J. R., and Smith, B. S. 1980. A Prairie Garden : Seventy Native Plants You Can Grow in Town or Country. New York: University of Wisconsin P.
Smith, R. B., and Siegel. L. J. 2000. Windows into the Earth : The Geologic Story of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. New York: Oxford UP.
Stolzenburg, W. 2008. Where the Wild Things Were : Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators. Grand Rapids: Bloomsbury.
Walker, B., Salt,D., and Reid, W. 2006. Resilience Thinking : Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World. New York: Island P.
