The Learning Umbrella

Salmon is a very culturally important animal here in the Pacific Northwest.  For one thing, it’s really yummy.

Food value aside, the fish is also important because it has a strange life cycle, spending its adult life in the ocean and returning up the rivers and streams to lay its eggs and have the babies grow in the freshwater.  The adults die after they lay their eggs, and their bodies decay and bring a huge dose of nutrients into that upstream ecosystem.

Salmon are threatened by development that blocks rivers or throws silt into them or removes the shade trees along the shoreline.  We have a wonderful project going on in this area to plant native shade plants along streams, monitor the water health, and even throw dead salmon carcasses into streams to replace the nutrients that used to naturally enter those ecosystems!  These are cool volunteer opportunities for kids and families, and this fall I’m looking forward to doing some more of it.

For our summer RE program, we’re just prepping the kids for that volunteering, and if they choose to do it in the Fall they can earn the whole Respect for Nature badge from Earth Scouts.  Our last meeting was the Salmon Story, so I started by having the kids each draw one item they were randomly assigned: a salmon, an orca, a factory, etc.  After they were done, I took all their drawings and arranged them in a story line, and we “walked through” the story of the salmon returning upstream.  This was very successful, with only one drawing not fitting in, since a child had interpreted “seal” as being in the arctic.  They were a bit upset about having their arctic seal moved down to our rivers,  but were fine after we discussed that salmon do this in Alaska also.

After this, I read a book aloud, and we had other books there to look at.

Salmon Stream is a rhyming story, with much repitition and some simple but good illustrations.  This is the one I read out loud, and the kids deemed it “like Dr. Seuss”.  That’s a compliment.

Sockeye’s Journey Home follows a salmon on his trip upstream.  My problem with this book is that it shows so many dangers, it seems hopeless/lucky for the fish to make it, and it doesn’t really show the human impact very much.  But it’s exciting and it does show the journey in an easy to understand way.

Come Back Salmon is a great book to show kids.  It follows the efforts of one classroom, led by one of those inspiring teachers that takes on big projects, and how the kids worked to restore a salmon run that most people thought was a lost cause.  They succeed, and the book leaves you with the idea that you could succeed too, if you just try to make a difference. 

My little library gathering looks pitiful next to this list.  I’m going to be looking for some of these!

And then you can also get a free salmon coloring book here.