Seneca Valley students trade books for maple syrup
CRANBERRY TWP — Seneca Valley fifth-graders gathered outside Tuesday, March 11 for an unusual class lesson involving syrup and pancakes instead of pencils and paper.
“We’re making maple syrup today!” Ken Cahall told his students.
Cahall, a science teacher at Haine Middle School, hosted a mini-maple sugaring festival at Haine Middle School throughout the day for fifth-grade classes in the school’s courtyard. He showed students the process of making maple syrup.
Specifically, students learned about the science behind the maple sugaring process through a live demonstration using a homemade evaporator.
The maple sugaring event was part of an outdoor education initiative that Cahall is piloting this year. He said getting the students outdoors, and doing hands-on activities provides benefits for their education.
“There’s a lot of benefits to it. Some of the behaviors you see in the classroom, just by getting up and spreading out a bit, you don’t always see those. And then there’s a lot of health benefits to the outdoors, and to get the kids entertained beyond the screens,” Cahall said.
The fifth graders at Haine Middle School are currently studying plants, which Cahall said makes the event a good fit.
Cahall said the classes piloting the program identified trees back in the fall that would be good to use. Students calculated the diameter of the trunks on maple trees on the school’s campus to make sure the trees where large enough to tap, and used tangent height gauges and triangulations to find heights of tall objects. In January, classes went out to tap the maple trees, and they have been collecting sap in preparation for this festival.
“In the fall, the kids identified the maple trees. The reason we focus on the maple trees is because the sap is going to have the sugar content,” Cahall said. “Then, in January, we go out and we tap those trees … This is the ideal time to collect the sap because we need the freezing temperatures at night to cause the sap to flow up to the branches, and then, in the warm days it goes back down, so you can collect it while it goes up and down.
“If it’s too warm it stops flowing, so that’s why we kind of have to do it this time of year.”
He said students created the evaporator to boil down the sap. They’ve had to evaporate 39 gallons of sap to create 1 gallon of syrup, a process that Cahall called labor intensive, but also pretty rewarding.”
Kari Zimmer, a Seneca Valley school board member who came to observe Cahall’s lesson, said the board is supportive of his initiative and sees the benefits of such activities.
“I am really proud of the work that Mr. Cahall has done, and am proud that the district supported this endeavor. Because I agree that so much of learning can be passive, and kids can be better off, obviously when it’s authentic and in front of them. And I saw so many cross-curricular things involved, obviously math, the measuring,” Zimmer said. “I even learned something new today.”
