GMS Junior Field Trip April 2023

GMS Junior Field Trip
Easter Egg Hunt & Kyanite in Georgia
Saturday, April 15, 2023

With the GMS building still undergoing repairs, and all of our GMS stuff scattered in various storage locations, Charles and I had our own egg hunt. Bill Waggener helped us check box after box until we found the big box of plastic eggs that we use every year. Then, with some help from Kim Cochran, we filled 320 eggs with rocks and fossils donated just for this trip! Plus, I filled an additional 20 eggs with numbers for door prizes.

Junior members Ana, Rosie, and Madison, as well as some helpful adults, hid all of the regular eggs while I hid the 20 door prize eggs. Before we finished hiding eggs, Jason, Nedra, Aaron, Cameron, and others had the tent, table, and snacks all set up! Then Charles arrived with the caravan of cars and Jared directed parking. Somehow, we managed to gather everyone together and get them to hold still long enough for a group photo. Jessica gave us a quick lesson about kyanite, the mineral that juniors would be collecting later. It has the formula Al₂SiO₅. Andalusite and sillimanite have the same formula, but they form at different temperatures and pressures. Fascinating!

Finally, Jessica did the “1, 2, 3, go!”, and the juniors were off to the hunt! It didn’t take long before all of them had baskets brimming with eggs. They made sure that their fellow juniors found plenty of eggs and they made sure that they all had a special door prize egg too. Back at the tent, they went to work eagerly opening the eggs to reveal the goodies inside. Everyone, including older juniors, helped identify the rocks and fossils from the eggs. All of the juniors took careful notes for later, and I was impressed with how much they learned. Then, thanks to Diana’s strong lungs calling out numbers, one by one juniors picked out a special door prize. Plus, they each received a cool little dinosaur skeleton puzzle donated by Ken Scher!

But that’s not all! Juniors got to scratch around and collect kyanite all by themselves. They found lots of good kyanite specimens. Diana set up a washing station so juniors could clean up their kyanite. She also wire-wrapped their kyanite as well as crystals and other goodies from their eggs, so juniors went home with custom pendants too!

So many moving parts came together with the help of so many people. First and foremost, the property owner took time to prepare for us and welcome us to her beautiful place. She moved her animals to different fields, made sure the gravel road was smooth, and she even encouraged some 3-week-old lambs to come out for us to see! Bill Waggener, Kim Cochran, and Ken Scher helped with the eggs and prizes. Jason, Aaron, and Madison Leatherwood, Nedra Bonavita, Cameron Clines, and Diana Poppelreuter all came to help set up, manage the trip, and identify specimens. Jessica Terrien-Dunn, Jared Dunn, and Ana and Rosie took care of the yummy snacks, and helped hide eggs too. Jessica put a lot of thought and effort into a fascinating lesson about kyanite for us. The juniors and their parents came to learn and have fun, and generously helped one another too. And, of course, Charles worked hard to put it all together. Many, many thanks to everyone for contributing to an awesome junior field trip!

Lori Carter
On behalf of Charles Carter, Field Trip Chair
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