This post is part of our @PhillyH2O at Home series: fun at-home science and learning activities from our Fairmount Water Works educators and other partners to help your family stay engaged with water issues.

Love Your Park: Listen to the Woods

As you are staying home as much as you can and physically remaining distant yet socially  connected, be glad that you have reliable, healthy, high quality drinking water!

This water comes to you, thoroughly cleaned to high quality, from the Delaware and Schuylkill River. The parks and natural areas in our area watersheds are part of the reason that we have an excellent source to draw water from. When there are woods and wetlands, nature cleans the rainwater before it runs off to the rivers. 

This week is Love Your Park Week, an annual event that has been adapted to meet the safety needs of the COVID-19 response. If you get a chance to explore in the parks (while staying 6 feet away from everyone), use your senses to observe everything you can!

Look for flowers and changes in nature.

What do you notice? What changes are there from week to week? Smell the fresh woods, any flower fragrance, and notice the differences in the smells of different areas of the woods.

Listen to the sounds: birds, insects, frogs, people, water. Feel the wind and the cool shade or warm sun. Each day your senses will give you different information.

Enjoy this sound clip of spring peepers in the Pennypack Watershed. These tiny frogs have a mating ritual every year of calling out to each other. They sound like jingle bells in the woods.

Take a listen!

Listen: Pennypack Watershed Spring Peepers

According to the Pa. Fish and Boat Commission, the spring peeper is active through the warm months from March and April until October and November. Because of their small size and cryptic coloration, they aren’t often seen outside of the breeding season when calling gives away their location.

Learn more about the spring peeper courtship ritual in this article by the Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University.

Thanks for listening with us!

More: Check out the Fairmount Water Works Distance Learning Resources blog for fun activities to do with kids at home.