ROCS triples its enrollment towards connecting kids to nature  

Submitted by

Gina Root, Director of the ROCS and of the Ozark Rivers Audubon Chapter.

Rolla Outdoor Collaborative School

(Note: this is an article shared by the ROCS Director, as featured in a recent submission of the Phelps County Focus)

By Andrew Sheeley, Staff Writer

andrew.sheeley@phelpscountyfocus.com

The Rolla Outdoor Collaborative School (ROCS) is entering this school year with an attendance that’s tripled from its first class of students. Based at the Audubon Trials Nature Center, the nature-focused [clarification per an update from ROCS Director] “outdoor enrichment education or more specifically nature preschool, homeschool enrichment and afterschool program” is dedicated to connecting local youngsters to opportunities to learn about and play outdoors. As part of its growth, the organization is also expanding its outreach to the wider community by offering free events for families and adults looking to enjoy the local landscapes. 

“I am doing my dream job,” says Gina Root, who serves as both the director of ROCS and president of the Ozark Rivers Audubon Chapter. “ROCS was created during COVID. There was a group of families who were ready to get their kids back to being social but were also wanting to do it in a way that was safe because that was so when everybody had to mask and everything, and so we created this program.” 

In helping organize ROCS, Root says she drew upon her 25-year experience as an environmental educator and successful Tinkergarten program she helped found in Rolla. 

“We had a wonderful first year. That summer, we decided to extend it and do some summer camps, so it’s just kind of blown up since then,” Root says. “We started with about 20 to 25 kids, and I think I enrolled our 93rd for the school year this coming year. So, we’ve officially tripled since then in size.” 

Fueling the success of ROCS has been a spirit of encouraging youthful curiosity, accompanied with the freedom to let kids explore. 

“We mostly focus on nature lessons, so like we might learn about foxes one week, and then we’ll do arts and crafts, we’ll come up with games and activities and we hike every day,” Root says. “We have our area where the kids can do free play. We have large loose parts, like big chunks of wood, and they love to create courses for the cars and the trucks that we have. We have sandboxes, we have a puppet show and we have a mud kitchen. There’s a lot of free play that goes on. We like to say that we’re about half teacher led, and half child led, so letting them do what they like. Research shows that’s where the learning really comes, it’s in the interaction between kids.”

Among the activities ROCS hosts for youngsters are science experiments, citizen science projects, summer camps and regular hikes to explore the nature center. During its summer hiking series, ROCS hosted everything from moon hikes to a UV-light powered evening of finding bugs. Root says there is a fee to participate in ROCS programming, and families are expected to volunteer toward maintaining the Audubon Trails Nature Center. However, ROCS does offer scholarships and free activities for the community. 

“In this age of screens, screens, screens, we need to get kids away from that, even if it’s for an hour a week or a couple hours a week. They need to be comfortable outside,” Root says. “The best thing for our young generation is to build resilience so as things change on Earth, they will be comfortable being in the outdoors and comfortable being with what changes may come. I’m really happy to get kids out here, and we’re out here rain or shine. The rainy days are so fun, and it’s so fun to see these resilient kids out here. They don’t care that it’s raining, and they don’t care that they’re muddy. We have a great time.” 

With the support of the Phelps County Children’s Advocacy Network, ROCS will next be launching a free Family Health Series focusing on topics like child abuse prevention, knowing CPR, and staying safe when using the internet. Beginning in September, the Audubon Trials Nature Center will also be hosting a forest bathing class for adults looking to meditate in nature with the help of a facilitator. 

“We do have a big initiative working together with Audubon, the outdoor school,” Root says. “We’ve been working with an architect, so hopefully within the next year, we’ll have a conceptual drawing that we’ll introduce to the public. We’ll then start a capital campaign so we can build a full welcome center that will have a storm shelter in it, so on those days where there’s lightning, we will have an option to go indoors, and on the days that it’s really cold, maybe we won’t have to cancel and we can just have a warm up station and spend a little bit of time indoors.”

You can learn more about ROCS by visiting www.rollaoutdoorschool.org. You can also learn more about the Audubon Trials Nature Center by visiting www.ozarkriversaudubon.org. 

ROCS Lesson Plan

Title: Forest Food Web 

Objective/Questions: 

Learn about food webs with a visual representation of ecological connections 

Key Concepts: 

Food web, producers, consumers, carnivores, herbivores, omnivores, ecology, connections in nature 

Background Info: 

Energy in food can be traced back to the sun. Living things need a constant supply of energy. The sun provides that energy, which is transformed into food by plants through photosynthesis. Plants are producers. 

Herbivores (plant-eating animals) eat the plants and receive energy. When the herbivore is eaten by a carnivore (an animal that eats herbivores), the energy from the herbivore is transferred to the carnivore. The transfer of energy from one organism to another makes up a food chain. 

Animals eat to get energy and building blocks. All living things need food to provide materials for growth. Food chains start with organisms that make their own food, called producers. Plants are the most common producers. Animals are called consumers because they do not make their own food — they eat, or consume, other organisms. 

A food chain typically only has a few steps (usually 4 at the most). This is because each time one organism eats another, some of that energy is used up and released as heat. 

A food web is a model of intersecting food chains. Most organisms can eat, and be eaten, by many different animals. A food chain wouldn’t be able to show this. Food webs show all these connections. They are more complicated but more accurate. 

Decomposers break down dead organisms. One group of consumers that is often not shown in food webs are decomposers. Decomposers are organisms (mostly bacteria and fungi) that break down dead plants and animals, eventually turning them into nutrients that will be added to soil. These nutrients are very important to continue the cycle in the ecosystem. Slugs, earthworms, millipedes, and centipedes also help break down dead things. Without decomposers, nutrients would not get recycled and we would have dead material piled up everywhere.

What You’ll Need: 

• Book about Forest ecology or forest animals (Examples: The Busy Tree) ● Ball of Yarn 
• Optional: small plastic forest animals or pictures of animals 

Steps: 

1. Read the book and briefly explain that all animals and organisms in the forest have a relationship with each other. Give some examples like: “the owl is a carnivore and eats the mice” “mice are herbivores and eat the grass and nuts” 
2. Tell the children that you are going to talk about each animal/organism in the forest and actually see how they are connected to the other organisms. 
3. Assign each child an organism. (See the photo below for some examples) Give one child the ball of yarn and ask them to unroll it and connect to another organism they would eat or be eaten by. 
4. Continue to have the children unwind the yarn and draw connections between each organism until they cannot think of any more connections. (You may need to cut the yarn to make multiple connections) 
5. Ask the children to observe all the connections and try to give a name for the shape they see. Tell them this is a food web!