What happens to litter dropped in an oak woodland?
Leaf litter, or duff, is the term for leaves, stems, bark, twigs and other natural things that fall to the woodland floor. Litter is also a word for the waste that people (humans) drop in public places. We found these pieces of leaf litter and human litter nearby. We put them in boxes of duff — leaves, stems, bark, twigs and other things from the woodland floor — for you to investigate up close. Every four weeks, we add a new set of litter to a different duff box, so you can discover what happens to litter in the woods.
Find the duff boxes in the native garden outside the Bill and Jean Lane Education Center at Edgewood Natural Preserve.
Explore on your own, do the activities on the signs above the duff boxes, or follow the experiment below.
Tools on Site
- Duff boxes
- Pile of sticks for digging, and to use like chopsticks to pick up objects. Please return the sticks to “used sticks” pile when you are done.
- “Decomposers in the Garden” banner
- Your eyes, ears and nose, for observing carefully.
- Your voice, for sharing your observations and thoughts out loud.
Optional tools to bring:
- Measuring tape or ruler, to accurately record changes in size.
- Paper and pencil, or other drawing tools, to capture images, ideas or data as you investigate.
- Camera to take pictures of your notebook or your findings.
Investigate: Explore what (and who!) is on the woodland floor
Choose a stick off the ground to gently explore in a duff box, all the way to the bottom. Be a detective! Use your senses — sight, smell, sound and touch — to thoroughly investigate what’s inside the box.
Describe what you feel, see and hear out loud, “I notice…”.
Do you have questions about it? Say your questions out loud,
“I wonder…?”
Does it connect to something you remember? Say out loud,
“It reminds me of …!”
Keep talking till you run out of things to say! Listen to your families’ observations, too, and see what you can add.
Naturalist John Muir Laws says, “By describing what you see, your brain also processes each observation more deeply. This is reinforced by the auditory feedback loop of hearing your own voice describing what you see. You will find that the things that you say remain in your working memory much longer than what you think quietly to yourself.”