The Daily Ardmorite
Ardmore, Oklahoma
Nature The of Education
Story and Page Design by Leah J. Simmons Photos by Don Alquist
Fifth-grade students from Hedrick Elementary School in Lewisville, Texas, left the comfort of the bustling
city -- along with their cell phones, CD players and televisions -- and found themselves thrust headlong
into a one-on-one brush with nature.
Here, they encountered wildlife, got up close and personal with a 40-foot-long dinosaur and learned the
ways of tribal Indian life of long ago. They left awe-inspired and with a renewed sense of respect for a way
of life they might never see again.
Since 1967, students from north Texas and Oklahoma have converged in the Arbuckle Mountains for an
educational experience natural-style at the Goddard Youth Camp.
During this outing, two different groups from Lewisville spent the week in the Goddard Youth Camp cabins
learning about the outdoors and the natural setting, which is as foreign to these city kids as the extinct life
they learned about while staying there.
A beaver gnaws a branch in the Goddard museum's waterless aquarium.
"They are city boys and girls. Many of them have never and probably will never be able to go to camp,"
said group leader Linda Franklin, who has been coming to the camp with Texas students for 23 years.
"They are totally out of their element out here. They don't have televisions or cell phones or CD players.
They think they will miss them and they complain, but once they get here, they don't even remember they
don't have them.
Students get a hands-on look at one of the Indian homes on display.
"They live in a city, a suburb of Dallas and they don't see stuff like this."
One of the highlights of their week was a Thursday-morning visit to the Goddard Children's Museum, a
hands-on teaching facility where they were able to touch and feel and learn about the exhibits in a variety
of different venues.
Leading the group was staff naturalist Susan Edgar, who grew up at the camp run by her father and mother.
"These kids are part of the week-long program and on Thursdays, they come to the museum," Edgar said.
"This is an environmental education program and they bring their kids for a week. They basically have
classrooms outside, a full-service cafeteria, fossils, fishing, boating and cabins and they come to the
museum."
The first stop in the tour was a visit to the museum theater, where the students watched a 30-minute film
titled "The Tallgrass Prairie." Then, it was on the Graffham Hall, where the students met the camp's largest
occupant -- "Fran," a 40-foot-long Acrocanthasaurus donated to the museum by Allen Graffham of
Geological Enterprises in Ardmore. "Fran" is the only complete Acrocanthasaurus ever found and was
unearthed in southeastern Oklahoma near Broken Bow.
In Graffham hall, students filed into the room and gravitated toward exhibits like the fossilized legbone of
the Edmontosaurus -- a duck-billed dinosaur -- and the display of rose rocks and quartz crystals dug up from
McCurtain County.
Ten-year-old Rebecca Littrell, 10, a fifth-grader at Hedrick Elementary School in Lewisville, Texas, stares
at the head of "Fran," an Acrocanthasaurus dinosaur that is on display at the Goddard Children¹s Museum
in the Arbuckle Mountains.
Prints along the walls showed what the Oklahoma landscape looked like during the Jurassic period.
Edgar explained that the barite crystals can be found in other areas, but only in Oklahoma do they form in
the shape of a rose, making Oklahoma the only place to find rose rocks.
She talked at length about Fran and compared her to the Tyrannosaurus Rex
"The T-Rex would rather eat something dead than have to go out and hunt it. He would scavenge first,"
Edgar told the students. "Acrocanthasaurus only ate fresh meat. She had binocular vision, which means
both of her eyes were on the front of her head and that gave her depth perception, so she could tell just
how far out in front of her the prey was."
She even pointed out evidence of arthritis on a rib bone, which was formed after an injury.
From the dinosaur room, the students traipsed to the Native American exhibit, where an authentic Indian
village is displayed, with two different types of homes set up and a sweat lodge between the two.
"We had leaders of different tribes come in and build all these exhibits for us in the old way," Edgar said.
"They didn't use any tools. They did built the homes and weapons the way they were built by the original
tribes and sewed clothing using the old methods.
"The things in this room are representative of the Native American culture as it was about 500 years ago,
because 500 years ago, the Spanish came over and they brought with them things that changed the
culture," Edgar told the students.
A "dome home" in one corner represented the wigwams that were the dwelling places of Woodland
Indians who lived in the forests.
"It has permanent seating and shelves in there because everything they needed was all around them in
the forest," Edgar said. "Across the room is a teepee that was the home for the Plains Indians. The Plains
Indians for the most part were nomadic and had to have a home that could be packed up and carried on
their backs."
She also showed the different tools and how they were used, and explained the process for scraping and
softening leather to make the clothing.
"They softened leather by soaking it in water and animal brains," she said. "Then they would hang it over
the fire and the smoke would seal the chemicals in it. It's called 'brain tanning' and even the finest, most
expensive leather you can buy today has been brain tanned, because it's a very effective way to soften
leather."
From the Indian village, the groups went to the forest and water exhibit, which houses another unique
teaching tool -- a waterless aquarium, one of only a few in North America.
"We have several dioramas of what the environment looked like when nobody was disturbing it," Edgar
said. "We have real animals in there that are taxidermied, but it's museum-quality scientific taxidermy.
They are stuffed in natural positions the way they would have been in the wild. And the fish are all
mounted in a stream."
The waterless aquarium proved a big hit among the students, who asked many questions about its design
and function.
"We wanted to have a live aquarium down here where you could pet the fish, but we couldn't control the
humidity, so we decided to have a waterless aquarium," Edgar told the students. "This is a better teaching
tool because we're able to explain to you what happens better because this environment never changes.
"The main benefit of the waterless aquarium for educational purposes is what you're talking about is
always there," she said. "If you're talking about a catfish with its mouth open catching prey, that's always
going to be there. You don't have to sit and wait and hope it will happen like with a live aquarium."
"We're open for all students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Most of the kids that come through are in
the fourth, fifth and sixth grades."
"The camp is geared toward fifth-graders, so much of our museum students are fifth-graders."
"We're showing these kids things they'll never have the opportunity to see otherwise," Edgar said. "We're
showing them things they won't learn in a classroom. In this museum, you don't walk through and read
signs. There are no signs. I go with them through each room and explain all the exhibits and where they
came from and what they do. Then I let them ask questions."
The last stop is the museum store.
"I liked the last part and the Indian part because I'm part Indian," 11-year-old Xzavier Betts said. "My mom
taught me how to read Indian stories, so I kind of knew what was going on."
His friend, 11-year-old Roberto Parra, also liked the Native American room.
"It taught me a lot about Native Americans," he said. "I remembered some stuff from class, but this was
more fun."
Rebecca Littrell, 10, liked the waterless tank, especially the snake "swimming" around in the water. But
there was something else that caught her attention early on.
"The movie was my favorite," she said. "I learned that we have to save our prairies instead of letting them
waste away."
"We bring nine to 10 teachers that come up and they do all the teaching and presentations and we have
volunteer parents who come up and stay in the cabins with us," said group leader Linda Franklin, a former
teacher.
"We do arts and crafts and have a star show at night. Our postmaster from school does this as a hobby and
brings two telescopes for the kids to use," Franklin said. "We have something special every night for them."
"I grew up in this area and I knew the camp when it was Platt National Park. My family used to camp
there," she said.
Ardmore, Oklahoma
Nature The of Education
Story and Page Design by Leah J. Simmons Photos by Don Alquist
Fifth-grade students from Hedrick Elementary School in Lewisville, Texas, left the comfort of the bustling
city -- along with their cell phones, CD players and televisions -- and found themselves thrust headlong
into a one-on-one brush with nature.
Here, they encountered wildlife, got up close and personal with a 40-foot-long dinosaur and learned the
ways of tribal Indian life of long ago. They left awe-inspired and with a renewed sense of respect for a way
of life they might never see again.
Since 1967, students from north Texas and Oklahoma have converged in the Arbuckle Mountains for an
educational experience natural-style at the Goddard Youth Camp.
During this outing, two different groups from Lewisville spent the week in the Goddard Youth Camp cabins
learning about the outdoors and the natural setting, which is as foreign to these city kids as the extinct life
they learned about while staying there.
A beaver gnaws a branch in the Goddard museum's waterless aquarium.
"They are city boys and girls. Many of them have never and probably will never be able to go to camp,"
said group leader Linda Franklin, who has been coming to the camp with Texas students for 23 years.
"They are totally out of their element out here. They don't have televisions or cell phones or CD players.
They think they will miss them and they complain, but once they get here, they don't even remember they
don't have them.
Students get a hands-on look at one of the Indian homes on display.
"They live in a city, a suburb of Dallas and they don't see stuff like this."
One of the highlights of their week was a Thursday-morning visit to the Goddard Children's Museum, a
hands-on teaching facility where they were able to touch and feel and learn about the exhibits in a variety
of different venues.
Leading the group was staff naturalist Susan Edgar, who grew up at the camp run by her father and mother.
"These kids are part of the week-long program and on Thursdays, they come to the museum," Edgar said.
"This is an environmental education program and they bring their kids for a week. They basically have
classrooms outside, a full-service cafeteria, fossils, fishing, boating and cabins and they come to the
museum."
The first stop in the tour was a visit to the museum theater, where the students watched a 30-minute film
titled "The Tallgrass Prairie." Then, it was on the Graffham Hall, where the students met the camp's largest
occupant -- "Fran," a 40-foot-long Acrocanthasaurus donated to the museum by Allen Graffham of
Geological Enterprises in Ardmore. "Fran" is the only complete Acrocanthasaurus ever found and was
unearthed in southeastern Oklahoma near Broken Bow.
In Graffham hall, students filed into the room and gravitated toward exhibits like the fossilized legbone of
the Edmontosaurus -- a duck-billed dinosaur -- and the display of rose rocks and quartz crystals dug up from
McCurtain County.
Ten-year-old Rebecca Littrell, 10, a fifth-grader at Hedrick Elementary School in Lewisville, Texas, stares
at the head of "Fran," an Acrocanthasaurus dinosaur that is on display at the Goddard Children¹s Museum
in the Arbuckle Mountains.
Prints along the walls showed what the Oklahoma landscape looked like during the Jurassic period.
Edgar explained that the barite crystals can be found in other areas, but only in Oklahoma do they form in
the shape of a rose, making Oklahoma the only place to find rose rocks.
She talked at length about Fran and compared her to the Tyrannosaurus Rex
"The T-Rex would rather eat something dead than have to go out and hunt it. He would scavenge first,"
Edgar told the students. "Acrocanthasaurus only ate fresh meat. She had binocular vision, which means
both of her eyes were on the front of her head and that gave her depth perception, so she could tell just
how far out in front of her the prey was."
She even pointed out evidence of arthritis on a rib bone, which was formed after an injury.
From the dinosaur room, the students traipsed to the Native American exhibit, where an authentic Indian
village is displayed, with two different types of homes set up and a sweat lodge between the two.
"We had leaders of different tribes come in and build all these exhibits for us in the old way," Edgar said.
"They didn't use any tools. They did built the homes and weapons the way they were built by the original
tribes and sewed clothing using the old methods.
"The things in this room are representative of the Native American culture as it was about 500 years ago,
because 500 years ago, the Spanish came over and they brought with them things that changed the
culture," Edgar told the students.
A "dome home" in one corner represented the wigwams that were the dwelling places of Woodland
Indians who lived in the forests.
"It has permanent seating and shelves in there because everything they needed was all around them in
the forest," Edgar said. "Across the room is a teepee that was the home for the Plains Indians. The Plains
Indians for the most part were nomadic and had to have a home that could be packed up and carried on
their backs."
She also showed the different tools and how they were used, and explained the process for scraping and
softening leather to make the clothing.
"They softened leather by soaking it in water and animal brains," she said. "Then they would hang it over
the fire and the smoke would seal the chemicals in it. It's called 'brain tanning' and even the finest, most
expensive leather you can buy today has been brain tanned, because it's a very effective way to soften
leather."
From the Indian village, the groups went to the forest and water exhibit, which houses another unique
teaching tool -- a waterless aquarium, one of only a few in North America.
"We have several dioramas of what the environment looked like when nobody was disturbing it," Edgar
said. "We have real animals in there that are taxidermied, but it's museum-quality scientific taxidermy.
They are stuffed in natural positions the way they would have been in the wild. And the fish are all
mounted in a stream."
The waterless aquarium proved a big hit among the students, who asked many questions about its design
and function.
"We wanted to have a live aquarium down here where you could pet the fish, but we couldn't control the
humidity, so we decided to have a waterless aquarium," Edgar told the students. "This is a better teaching
tool because we're able to explain to you what happens better because this environment never changes.
"The main benefit of the waterless aquarium for educational purposes is what you're talking about is
always there," she said. "If you're talking about a catfish with its mouth open catching prey, that's always
going to be there. You don't have to sit and wait and hope it will happen like with a live aquarium."
"We're open for all students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Most of the kids that come through are in
the fourth, fifth and sixth grades."
"The camp is geared toward fifth-graders, so much of our museum students are fifth-graders."
"We're showing these kids things they'll never have the opportunity to see otherwise," Edgar said. "We're
showing them things they won't learn in a classroom. In this museum, you don't walk through and read
signs. There are no signs. I go with them through each room and explain all the exhibits and where they
came from and what they do. Then I let them ask questions."
The last stop is the museum store.
"I liked the last part and the Indian part because I'm part Indian," 11-year-old Xzavier Betts said. "My mom
taught me how to read Indian stories, so I kind of knew what was going on."
His friend, 11-year-old Roberto Parra, also liked the Native American room.
"It taught me a lot about Native Americans," he said. "I remembered some stuff from class, but this was
more fun."
Rebecca Littrell, 10, liked the waterless tank, especially the snake "swimming" around in the water. But
there was something else that caught her attention early on.
"The movie was my favorite," she said. "I learned that we have to save our prairies instead of letting them
waste away."
"We bring nine to 10 teachers that come up and they do all the teaching and presentations and we have
volunteer parents who come up and stay in the cabins with us," said group leader Linda Franklin, a former
teacher.
"We do arts and crafts and have a star show at night. Our postmaster from school does this as a hobby and
brings two telescopes for the kids to use," Franklin said. "We have something special every night for them."
"I grew up in this area and I knew the camp when it was Platt National Park. My family used to camp
there," she said.
