For this obstacle course students will act out the salmon life cycle from fry to spawners. They have to survive in the wild!
Salmon start their lives as eggs, hidden in gravel at the bottom of fast flowing water. They grow up in this spawning ground
area as alevin (eating their egg sac) and fry (eating insects.) Seasonally, they are triggered to move beyond their spawning
ground. At the stage of smolts, their bodies undergo a large physiological transformation, allowing them to move through their
creek, through the river systems, and finally reaching the estuaries that lead them to the ocean. They live in the ocean for the
majority of their lives where they develop into adult salmon. Finally, when the time is right, their bodies undergo another large
physiological transformation allowing them to travel from the saltwater ocean to the freshwater creek where they were born.
They will lay their eggs and milt back in the exact same spot where they grew up for the beginning of their life.
Their migration follows a
great distance, amazing
abilities to find their home,
and incredible amounts of
threats along the way.
Goal: To create and complete
an obstacle course that
represents all the struggles
that real salmon have to
navigate as they go from rivers
to the ocean and back.
Materials: Whatever items you can
find around your house and outside.
If being outside is not an option
then just use your household items,
couch, chair, bed to represent items
such as salmon locks or waterfalls,
dams, and predators.
Set up: This obstacle course should not be very
easy to migrate through. As in the real world the
salmon have to overcome many obstacles. Try and
find ways that you have to jump, crawl under,
squeeze through, get around, climb and avoid. Use
your whole yard or house. Feel free to use both
your house and the outdoors as a whole course.
For example. You can start off in your bedroom as
your hatching area and end up outside down the
block or to a park as the ocean and then return all
the way back to your “spawning ground”
(bedroom) as your whole obstacle course. Think of
it as a giant salmon parkour.
Start here?Potential predator?
Shadows can be predators?
Getting up stream?
Swimming around rocks?
Requirements: You should have a
minimum of 6 predators and 10
obstacles one of which needs to be
uphill or upstairs.
Remember to have fun, be safe
and have a parent approve of
the obstacle course before you
try it.
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