A Rocha is on a quest!  In May our Learning & Interpretation program introduced the Pembina Valley Watershed Quest to nearly 100 students who visited the Pembina Valley Field Station in southern Manitoba to learn more about how a watershed functions.

Popular in the eastern U.S. as a means of place-based learning, quests are similar to geocaching but require no technology. Participants get their clues for movement and their educational information from a series of rhyming verses. Designed and developed by Larry Danielson, the Pembina Valley Watershed Quest addresses Grade 8 science outcomes for Manitoba in a feet-on-the-trail experiential way. Students see quite directly the meaning of such concepts as runoff, evaporation, transpiration, and percolation.

Danielson reports that one of the verses for the Watershed Quest used the phrase “in rain, snow, or sleet.” On the first day they used the Quest at the Field Station, students encountered all three, but they were all good sports and warmed up around a campfire marshmallow roast afterward. Led by Susan Pharaoh, students also engaged in music making, using a variety of simple instruments (e.g. rainsticks, coffee-can drums) to attune them to the sounds of nature they would experience in their forest exploration.