It’s cold outside. It was cold yesterday too, on the day we’d picked to take Mrs. Watson’s 3rd and 4th graders to the rain garden at Point Defiance Park. But the sun was out and the wind was mostly light and kids don’t really feel the cold the same way their elders do. Most of them, anyway.

The students were knowledgeable and eager to share their insights about stormwater, rain garden filtering processes, Puget Sound wildlife and a host of other topics. Christmas carols, random fact checking and intriguing noises were also well-represented in the conversation. All this enthusiasm was a good thing, as it happened, since the class was also on-site to help make a movie, and active participation was exactly what was needed.

The Washington Environmental Council (WEC) met us at Point Defiance to shoot interviews and b-roll for an upcoming short on stormwater and its effects on Puget Sound. The kids have had a couple classroom lessons before the field trip, and some of them had previous experience building the rain garden back at their school. The particular rain garden that we visited at Point Defiance happens to be the largest of its kind in the country, helping to clean dirty runoff from more than 750 acres of Tacoma’s surface streets, yards and parking lots.

The students from Sherman were also able to work with High-School students from the nearby Science and Math Institute (SAMI), and exchanged ideas about how the rain garden does its job, the various benefits to the local environment and more Christmas carols. Some of the students were called upon for short “interviews” on different topics related to stormwater and Puget Sound. Very much looking forward to seeing the finished product (and I’ll post a link when that is up and ready.)

Big thanks to WEC, Sherman Elementary and the parent volunteers who came along, and to Pierce County Transit for the Class Pass that made this trip affordable.