<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="4" style="font: 14.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Aquatic leaf packs are one of the activities that has the greatest "return on investment", <i>i.e.</i> that the "WOW" factor is very high for the amount of work they take to complete. They can be prohibitive as far as the time they need to sit in the water (ideally ~7 days), so are great for classrooms. You could put them out ahead of time for use in a non-formal situation. For those of you who have had lots of experience with aquatic leaf packs, try soil based packs... Basically, in the same mesh bags (old plastic onion bags), put vegetable scraps (peelings, leafy greens, compost-able stuff), and bury the pack in about 3" of good, fertile topsoil. There are TONS of soil macros, too. give them a week to crawl in, drawn by moisture and nutrients. I had the opportunity to do this out in the Rockies last year for a summer institute, and it worked like a charm. I have an article that may help explain the activity a little better- because we all have plenty of time to read more stuff!!! If you want a copy, just drop me a line. The listserve will not let anything over 50KB go through.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="4" style="font: 14.0px Helvetica">Enjoy. Keep us posted on how it goes, or other thoughts. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="4" style="font: 14.0px Helvetica">-Nick </font></div></body></html>