Instead of catching fish at pond, students released fish at popular park
May 14, 2018, 12:55 PM
MURRAY, Utah – Monday was the type of day students from Mill Creek Elementary wouldn’t want to play sick and stay home.
Especially with how nice the weather was.
Mainly, though, Monday was an exciting day for students because they were able to go on a field trip to Willow Pond Park in Murray. However, this field trip was different from a lot of others they have been to in the past.
Thanks to 4th and 5th grade students from Mill Creek Elementary, Willow Pond now has a lot more fish.
This past January, the students were given fish eggs to take care of and watch them hatch. Once they hatched, the students helped take care of the small fish until they grew larger.
Monday, the fish were ready to be released.
They’re only an inch or two long, some were even smaller and a few larger, but students used a small net to take the fish out of coolers and release them into the water. It was fun, but for some students, they were a little sad because they named some of the fish and really took ownership of them.
“It was sad,” said Lily Tergevorkian. “Some of the names, we named after Harry Potter. So, there was this one who ate another baby fish, and we named him Voldemort because he ate another baby fish.”
The fish are tiny, but given time, they will grow into bigger trout.
It was part of learning about science for students. Teachers say this type of hands on learning is something the students won’t forget.
“You can’t beat hands on learning,” said Kathryn Shields, one of the teacher from Mill Creek Elementary School on the field trip. “It’s one thing to talk about something and read about something in a book. Like, you can read about polar bears and we won’t have polar bears in Utah, but trout we have.”
In all the students received about 900 fish eggs.
About 450 fish were let go into the pond.
