Making Memories at SRAC

Ted Keir talked about the woolly mammoths in our region!

On days like today I am reminded of my fourth grade field trip to Spanish Hill. As you can imagine, that experience ended up being something that I talk about every week at SRAC. But I also have asked many visitors to SRAC if they remember where they went for their fourth grade field trip -(4th grade is the curriculum that covers our Native American history) and there has never been a person who couldn't tell me. To me, this gives us at SRAC a huge responsibility as we now provide the fourth grade field trips for more and more schools in the area.

Today we hosted Waverly School District's whole fourth grade - and it was the best one yet!

A total of five classes came to SRAC either in the morning or afternoon shift, and were split up into four groups who rotated through 4 stations.

Station 1 was hosted by SRAC's Ted Keir who talked about the Ice Age and what our region was like 12 - 15,000 years ago.

Station 2 was hosted by SRAC's Dick Cowles who discussed the arrival of the white man to our region.

By the way, Ted Keir and Dick Cowles are both 88 years old!

Station 3 was the Museum  of the Earth MAIZE: Mysteries of an Ancient Grain, hosted by SRAC's Janet Andrus.

Teacher Robin Blauvelt looks on as SRAC's Janet Andrus discusses the many mysteries of maize.

Station was the ever popular SRAC gift shop where many of the kids were able to buy something for as little as 25 cents and also could draw a Christmas scene to enter or Christmas drawing contest and be automatically entered into our contest where they could win great prizes!

SRAC's Dock Cowles holds up one of the many hands  on learning tools at his station!

In the meantime, back at the grade school, we had our own Jack Andrus who was fully dressed in Native American dress who visited the 3rd and 4th grade classes and shared many Native American children's stories.

Most importantly, we did ALL of this free of charge.

Some people ask why we as a small fledgling nonprofit organization wouldn't charge the schools. And to that I can only ask if people realize that the whole Waverly fourth grade actually had to WALK to SRAC today for their field trip for lack of funding for buses. The point is that we are a COMMUNITY, and we take care of one another. The teachers teach and try to give their kids the best learning experiences they can - to include a field trip to SRAC. And we at SRAC give what we can to those teachers and kids. We are all volunteers at SRAC, and we LOVE doing our part. That's how it works.

During this holiday season, I hope that you consider what it is that you can do for your community too. Together we are all better for it.


SRAC is a 501c3, are staffed 100% by volunteers, we do not take state or federal funding and rely on our memberships, admission donations, sales in our gift shop and generous donations from our community to support all that we do.

I hope that you will stop in SRAC sometime soon, consider supporting us and see what a community can create.

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