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This is a neat program I heard about from a friend and tried it. It works great. We started by finding leaf packs in a small local stream and having the kids looks through it to find macroinvertebrates. Our next step is to make our own out of onion bags collected and donated by our local supermarket produce department. We collect leaves, use a dichotomous key to identify them, and then fill the onion bags with the leaves as an outdoor activity. We will stake them along a local stream and a local pond then collect them in the spring to see what kind of macroinvertebrates we get. Sort of like a Biology Easter Egg Hunt. Here's a link: http://www.stroudcenter.org/lpn/

This is also a great activity for inquiry. You can have students use different types of leaves to see if some leaves are more preferred than others. You could also vary the type of stream where you place the bags or how long you leave the bags in the stream.

What a wonderful activity! I am now wondering where I could stage this with my 7th graders. It would really be fun to bring those back in the spring and see what they've attracted. Just in time to review classification. Thank you for sharing!