By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Winter recess begins for Great Bend schools on Monday, Dec. 23 this year. But the educational opportunities never end with the Kansas Wetlands Education Center just northwest of town. Director Curtis Wolf said a pair of educational activities are planned at KWEC immediately following Christmas, starting with a WILD program about winter tracks on Dec. 26 from 10-11 a.m.
"Wintertime, especially if we get snow, is a great time to go out and look for footprints and tracks in the snow," he said. "We'll talk about some of that, and if the weather is appropriate, we'll go out and look for some animal tracks around our nature trail."
Participants can also create a plaster track ornament to take home. Friday, Dec. 27 will be a drop-in STEM day from 1-3:30 p.m. at KWEC. Each quarter, KWEC tries to plan an activity around the four components of STEM: science, technology, engineering, and math.
"For the science part, we're going to be talking about mistletoe," Wolf said. "Mistletoe is a common plant for the holidays, so we'll have a little station talking about mistletoe and show some of the information about them - talk about how their berries can explode."
The technology lesson will feature a spinning Christmas tree, the engineering portion will detail how to construct a classic truck to carry a tree, and the math component will teach participants how to determine the height and diameter of a tree. Both the WILD program and drop-in STEM day are free of charge and no registration is required.