The highlight today is the big step forward in the Education Outreach Project so many of you are helping directly or with the proceeds from your web store purchases. We usually don’t name individuals for fear of leaving someone out, but Trish Kirk and Helen Schwartz made such an effort to get the facts that we may be safe this time. Here is their information with some editing and additions:
Contributors to Black Bear Boxes
Items made by Lily fans
Helen Schwarz made the PowerPoint presentation ABC's of Bears. Penni Storts and Kelie Stegh made the ABC tree and Guide. Denise Beverly made the Black Bear Fact Posters. Mary Anderson made the forest-theme flannel board set plus (9)puppets to go with books for each Pre-K to 2nd grade boxes. Sarah Endsley made the 'Touch and Feel Bags' for Pre-K – 2nd grade boxes. Kim A. Cabrera made a 'Black Bear Tracks, Scats, and Signs Concentration Game.' Connie Schutta made Puppet Bags with help from students from Americorps. Cathy Nagle-Ervin made DVD's of Wildlife Research Institute's videos of Black Bear Behavior. Tom Hennigan made a Powerpoint presentation on hibernation. Tim Muench designed and built the Boxes. Trish Kirk was the overall coordinator to bring all the materials together, including the materials listed below. She ordered materials as needed and put together the manual which will eventually become a book.
Items donated by Lily fans
Additional folks kindly donated items for the Black Bear Boxes: Cindy Honchar donated 'Lily's Big Event' for the Pre-K through 6 grade Boxes; Rhonda Becker donated card holders for 'Bear Fact' card game; and Saint Germain, Wisconsin taxidermist Cynthia Christman donated black bear hides.
Items bought with proceeds from purchases by Lily fans
Among the other items included in the Black Bear Boxes are a black bear skull replica, a section of a black bear's hide, authentic black bear scat with magnifying box; track molds and black bear track replicas, a variety of age-appropriate books and dvd's about black bears, Black Bear Tracking Stencils with guide to understanding gaits and track patterns, a black bear's 'Woodland Menu' poster, 'Black Bear Facts' posters, the 2011 Wildlife Research Institute Research Bears Calendar, including Shadow's Family Tree, and a Black Bear Box Manual packed full of information and activities.
More items may be added by the time online scheduling of the Black Bear Boxes begins in the near future.
And this is just a start. We’ll get feedback from teachers about what works for the different grade levels. We’ll add items as new ideas emerge. So far there are 12 boxes to circulate, one to be on exhibit at the Bear Center, and one extra to make sure we can send boxes out to classrooms on schedule. This is a pilot project to be expanded. People have been quietly working on this project for months. And more education outreach projects are in the pipeline.
On a related topic, 378 teachers have responded to the survey about how Lily and Hope were used in the classroom. Many of the teachers who responded gave ideas for the education outreach project.
On another topic, send in your stories of bear encounters as was mentioned in the update last night. Send them to
On Lily and Hope’s den cams, people are ordering equipment. Time is growing short. We have to put it all together and see what kind of bandwidth we get.
The address of the Ely Food Shelf is 102 East Sheridan Street, PO Box 786, Ely, MN 55731.
Thank you for all you do as evidenced in part above.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center