News : Benton County Conservation bring Crayfish to V-S 3rd Graders

3rd graders get up close and personal with crayfish

Benton County Conservation made a trip to Tilford Elementary last week to speak to the 3rd Grade classes. The topic of the visit was crayfish. The students had the opportunity to see crayfish that are brought to the school by the department.

"As part of the class the children make visual observations about the crayfish such as color, behaviors, amount of appendages, etc. and have them draw the crayfish," said Faith Henrichs, a Naturalist for BCC. "Then we show them how to properly hold a crayfish and allow time for the kids to pick them up and examine them further, such as how to tell if the crayfish is male or female," she said.

Once the kids have had time to examine the crayfish and the crayfish in the other groups, Henriches discussed the importance of crayfish as an indicator species and as part of the food chain, their habitat needs, what they eat, what they do in the winter and let kids ask more questions about the crayfish.

Each class was able to spend about 45 minutes with the naturalist. Once the classes are done with the crayfish, they are brought back to the Nature Center where they are on display and occasionally some of the cayfish end up as turtle food Henrichs said.