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The Little Red Schoolhouse
Nature Bulletin No. 424 September 10, 1971
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Daniel Ryan, President
Roberts Mann, Conservation Editor
David H. Thompson, Senior Naturalist
THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE
We have opened the doors of The Little Red Schoolhouse, our new
nature center in the Palos forest preserves. You are invited to visit it
and urged to use it. Many youth organizations, summer day camps,
and teachers with their classes have already done so. It is now open
every day, including Saturdays and Sundays, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00
p.m. From late October until April it probably will be closed. The
entrance is on 104th Ave. (Willow Springs Road), one mile west of
U.S. 45 and a half-mile south of 95th St. There is ample parking space
for buses.
The building, originally constructed at another location in 1886,
served as a one-room rural school until a few years ago when it was
abandoned and purchased by the Forest Preserve District. Now it has
been moved to the brow of a hill south of and overlooking Longjohn
Slough, remodeled, painted "barn red, " and converted into a unique
nature center.
Inside the schoolhouse are many exhibits: a large aquarium containing
the common kinds of native fish; smaller aquarium containing
minnows, tadpoles, salamanders, crawfish and aquatic insects; terraria
containing frogs, toads, turtles and small snakes; examples of the
common wildflowers when in bloom; habitat exhibits loaned by the
Illinois State Museum; and many others. There is always something
new. A naturalist is on duty to answer questions, help you use the
nature center, and start you off on the self-guiding nature trails.
There will be three principal trails from the schoolhouse and looping
back to it, located so as to wind through the typical kinds of vegetation
and landscape found in the Palos region, and interconnected so that
walks of different lengths, with different things to see, may be
selected. These trails are profusely labeled and the labels not only
identify but also tell interesting facts about all of the soils, grasses,
weeds, wildflowers, shrubs, trees and wildlife to be seen there. They
enable a teacher and her class, without a naturalist, to become well
acquainted with what they see.
One trail, now completed, skirts the south shore of Longjohn Slough --
a 35-acre shallow lake frequented by many kinds of waterfowl, wading
birds and shorebirds, especially during the migration periods in
autumn and spring. There are concealed blinds where these birds may
be watched and photographed. Then this trail crosses a wide opening
where we are restoring a typical sample of the original Illinois
prairies, with all the grasses, sedges and showy flowering plants that
have become so rare. From there it winds through a wooded rolling
upland area and back to the schoolhouse.
This fall, several other features will be completed at this nature center,
such as outdoor pits for snakes and turtles, and a semicircular walk out
over the water at the south end of the slough, but a teacher can spend a
most interesting and profitable half-day there with her class. That is
one purpose of The Little Red Schoolhouse. Reservations should be
made by telephoning the Forest Preserve District, Conservation
Department.
Announcement: The second Outdoor Education Workshop for Cook
County teachers will be held at Camp Sagawau on October 12-13-14,
sponsored by the committee appointed by Noble Puffer, county
superintendent of schools, and the Forest Preserve District. One of the
field trips will include a visit to The Little Red Schoolhouse.
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Update: June 2012
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