Donia Uribe stood in pitch black darkness for a moment Friday during a field trip to War Eagle Cavern in Rogers.
“You couldn’t go anywhere,” said Donia, 12, who completed sixth grade in May. “You could bump into stuff.”
Don Locander, a tour guide for the cavern, told one group of 16 Decatur schoolchildren, including Donia, to imagine what American Indians, Civil War soldiers and other cave visitors experienced prior to the addition of the electric lights that now illuminate the limestone cavern.
“This is cool,” several children in the group said while standing in the dark.
The promise of field trips spurred children from Decatur Public Schools to participate in a new summer learning program the school district offered this year for about 90 elementary and high school students. The district plans two three-week sessions.
Children who have completed the fourth, fifth and sixth grades spend one week learning about a topic and finish the week with a related field trip. Friday field trips took them to Terra Studios in Fayetteville and the cavern. They will end the first session with a trip to the Tulsa Zoo next week.
Donia described Decatur as a small place with a handful of stores. Most of the activities for children center around a park and a community pool, she said. She asked her mom to participate in the summer learning program because of the field trips.
“I told my mom it was better than being home bored,” she said.
Superintendent Larry Ben noticed that children in Decatur wanted more options for activities during the summer. So he began working with his staff and community members to create the summer program.
“What I really like about it is the focus on the projects, experiences and hands-on activities,” Ben said.
The district covers the $42,500 cost of the program with funds from a variety of sources.
This week, teacher Jennifer Kinder spent time teaching children about caves to prepare for their visit to War Eagle Cavern. On Tuesday, activities focused on speleothem - structures formed inside a cave from minerals deposited by water. Stalactites and stalagmites are examples of speleothem and are numerous inside the cavern.
Kinder led the children in an experiment to grow crystals, simulating the formation of stalagmites. Working in groups of four, each member of the group took turns gathering ingredients. Wearing latex gloves, safety goggles and eyeglasses, the children filled pie pans with charcoal briquettes. They dissolved Epsom salt in boiling water and then added dog shampoo and ammonia to the solution. Their teachers poured the solution over the charcoal. Each group then added food coloring.
Kinder told them the crystals would take several days to form.
War Eagle Cavern, on property owned by Dennis and Vicki Boyer, opened with tours for the public in 1977, Dennis Boyer said. The cavern temperature stays at a cool 58 degrees and draws about 30,000 visitors a year, he said.
During the tour Friday, Don Locander took his group into one room of the water-carved limestone cavern where it could see stalactites and sta-and stalagmites. Locander said an easy way of differentiating the two is remembering that stalactites hang “tight” to the ceiling, but stalagmites grow up from the floor.
“They are live and growing,” Locander said. The formations stop g rowing if touched because of oils in people’s skin.
Children also saw orange cave salamanders with black spots and brown camel crickets. They spotted fossils and waterfalls. And they quieted down to listen to water flowing through the cavern.
Locander pointed a flashlight at the ceiling to the show the children water droplets that sparkled in the light. Most of the time, the ceiling is dry, but the water droplets formed after a spring rain a couple of weeks ago. Some droplets fell on the children’s heads during their visit. Toward the end of the tour, Locander blew on the water droplets to make them fall. He called them “lucky cave drops.”
At one point, Lilly Carmean, 9, counted seven drops on her head. Lilly, who just finished fourth grade, wore glow-in-the-dark bat ears for the occasion. She remembered visiting the cave as a second-grader.
“They have a lot more lights,” she said.
Darius Gonzalez, 9, likes science, he said. He liked spotting crystals on the walls of the cavern and enjoys spending time with his friends and going places, he said.
“I really had nothing to do,” he said. He asked his parents to participate. “I asked them to and thought it would be fun, and it really is.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 06/22/2013