Thursday, June 5, 2008

Geology Rocks! at Parke Lane


Our first Geology Rocks! sign was officially installed at Parke Lane on Wednesday. We had a few minutes to meet with Principal Pat Nordstrom and our donors before the fire drill alarms went off at the school and Pat went rushing to oversee the process.

Rosie Meyer, our major Landscape for Learning donor represented the Richard & Rosalind Meyer Family Foundation. Bob Lawrence represented the Grosse Ile Rotary and their district office, both of which provided funds. We are grateful for the long-standing and patient support of both of these organizations. Over the summer we will be completing and installing the Geology Rocks! signs at the other Grosse Ile schools.

After unveiling the sign & having a photo shoot with E.L. Conley from the Ile Camera, our Bruce Jones gave us a short "Grosse Ile Geology" lesson. We have worked closely with John Zawiskie, staff geologist at the Cranbrook Institute of Science to learn as much as we could about this topic, to identify the boulders and the many fossils present in the limestone. I will admit that I wasn't particularly interested in this topic when we first started this project, but it's one of those subjects that gets fascinating as you learn more about it. The movement and re-arrangements of the continents over the ages, i.e. plate tectonics is pretty amazing.

One of the best things about this project is seeing the excitement in the children when they start finding the different types of fossils in the rocks.

This photo was taken at the Nature Area during one of the Delray summer camp visits.


Below are a couple of photos from the fossils on some of the boulders at the schools. Although the photos don;t really do them justice, they're still pretty impressive, don't you agree?

Go take a look at them in person & see what else you can find.

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