Let’s Go Chipper!™ is an award-winning eco-educational series playfully teaching children good character & a love for the environment. This year we’ve partnered with Hyatt Place® Phoenix/Mesa to bring Chipper into the classroom and inspire conscientiousness in kids. Call to receive your classroom kit or to book a story time with one of our Chipper Ambassadors, or let us create a program for you school, church, or community organization.
Meet Chipper’s Hyatt Helpers and have your kids color and name our five new desert friends from Arizona! Connect with Chipper and the Hyatt Helpers on Facebook to receive great downloads, and updates on events and activities and join us for a Chipper getaway enhanced with on-site or take-home activities that will enrich and educate your children.
Join Chipper and our Hyatt Helpers in connecting, celebrating, and conserving the environment.
Learn about our 5 new Arizona friends and help us name them!
How to participate:
Click on a character above (choose one or go through all five!).
Save and print the PDF.
Have your little one(s) color and name the character(s).
Snap a photo and upload your photo(s) of your little one(s) holding their character(s) online to our Facebook contest tab online (make sure your character’s name is visible but NOT your name and address!)* OR mail your character(s) to:
Hyatt Place® Phoenix/Mesa 1422 Bass Pro Drive Mesa, AZ 85201
FIVE WINNERS will be announced on March 28, 2013 and receive*:
Two nights stay at the Hyatt Place® Phoenix/Mesa for family up to four, a Gallery Cafe Certificate of $25, and a I’m Chipper 4 Hyatt Place Summer Fun Gift Pack! (Total value=$350)
*The “Name our Hyatt Helpers Contest” and prizes are exclusive to Hyatt Place® Phoenix/Mesa. Parents, we respect the privacy of your children. Please use your discretion in including your child in the image you upload when sharing your submission.
Let’s Go Chipper and get creative naming our Hyatt Place Helpers!
The Let’s Go Chipper series featuring books, apps, movies school- and community-based programs that playfully teach children respect, good character, and a love for the environment. Contact Chipper for your classroom kit or to book a story time with one of our Chipper Ambassadors, or let us create a program for you school, church, or community organization!
Ready to learn about Arizona? Check out these fun facts about the state’s history, people and official state symbols.
History
Statehood: February 14, 1912. Arizona was the 48th state to join the United States.
State Flag: Adopted in 1917, the lower half of the flag is a blue field. The upper half is divided into thirteen equal segments, six light yellow and seven red. In the center of the flag is a copper-colored five-point star. The red and the blue are the same shades as the flag of the United States of America, and it measures four feet high and six feet wide.
State Seal: Arizona’s main enterprises and attractions are represented in the seal, which was adopted in 1911. In the background of the seal is a range of mountains with the sun rising behind the peaks. At the right side of the mountains are a water storage reservoir and a dam, with irrigated fields and orchards. There are cattle grazing on the right, and a quartz mill and a miner with a pick and shovel on the left.
Population and Geography
Population: 6.5 million (2008 estimate)
State Capitol: Phoenix
Largest Cities: Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa, Glendale and Scottsdale
Border States: California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah
State Size: 113,909 square miles, the 6th largest state in the USA
Nature-inspired, play-based learning, enjoy hands-on crafts that will engage children while teaching valuable lessons in science, art, and social skills. Have you made a Helping Hands tree?
Chipper Ambassadors are available for story time activities in the classroom, community, or visit us during a Chipper family getaway providing fun for kids while parents reconnect.
Fun Things to do with the Kids in Arizona
Desert Botanical Garden | Located within Papago Park, this beautiful botanical garden has stunning plants and flowers as well as special exhibits. Children’s program activities, like weekend face-painting, are included in the admission price and are supervised by the head of the garden’s nature preschool program, which runs for three weekly 90-minute sessions in spring and fall. One exhibit you won’t want to miss is the butterfly habitat.
Hall of Flame Firefighting Museum | This is the ultimate playground for every kid who fantasizes about sliding down a firehouse pole. Visitors climb aboard the historical fire engines and try on real firefighters’ hats and gear. In addition to exhibits that bring Arizona’s firefighting history to life, don’t miss the presentations about fire safety. The staff and volunteers who give these talks are so animated that the kids become mesmerized and don’t even realize they’re learning valuable life lessons.
Pioneer Arizona Living History Museum | Young visitors meet the Old West at this re-created pioneer village, where your family can explore life as it was in Arizona a century ago. Stroll past historic buildings that range from a schoolhouse to the blacksmith’s shop to an opera house. Since this was rancher country, there’s plenty of livestock on hand to capture your kids’ attention. Arrive in time for the re-enactment performed daily at 11:30 a.m. and you’ll even have an encounter with the sheriff, his deputies, and the bank robbers they’re pursuing. The show culminates with a shoot-out, after which the actors sign autographs.
With a new year comes new life! Salmon spawning season has officially begun and grizzly bears, bald eagles, and sport fisherman couldn’t be more excited. Salmon are not just tasty to eat though. They are important to our Eco-system and very unique aquatic animals. Salmon (derived from the latin term salmo which means leaper) have one of the most interesting life cycles of any animal on earth. Born in a fresh water stream and then migrating into the ocean to live in salt water, they migrate for thousands of miles before returning to their natal stream to spawn (or lay eggs). This behavior is called anadromous, and salmon are not the only fish that are born in fresh water and spend the majority of their lives in salt water. Sturgeon, trout, and many other fish do the same thing. In South American Rivers, sharks are also anadromous.
So what makes the salmon special then? Pacific salmon are unique in that spawning is the last act of their life cycle. One of the most remarkable things about salmon is how they manage to find their natal stream after spending years in the ocean migrating for thousands of miles. Some studies have indicated that smell is a factor that enables a salmon to hone into the stream it was born in. Other studies indicate that the brain of the salmon is sensitive to the magnetic field of the earth and that this may be a factor in the homing instinct. Regardless of the mechanism that enables a salmon to do this, their ability to find the origin of their birth after migrating thousands of miles from home is truly a remarkable feat.
Salmon undergo a physical transformation during their transition from the saltwater environment back to the freshwater home of their birth. This transition affects the appearance of the fish very radically. Not only do they stop feeding, but they also undergo a color and shape change. The male salmon typically forms a curved mouth (called a kype) with large canine like teeth. The males of some species form a hump on their back during their transition. The female salmon do not undergo such a radical shape change, but do undergo significant color changes.
During the spawning migration up river, the male of the species takes the role of protector and attempts to gain the favor of a suitable female. To the fisherman, this means that the male fish are more likely to be aggressive and strike a lure or bait that intrudes his territory. Females will also strike lures and baits, and we can only presume that this is due to a similar protective trait, or an instinct to continue feeding.
Once a dominant male and female fish have paired up for mating, the female begins to clean a well-oxygenated gravel bed by scouring it with her tail in sweeping motions. The female will select an area in the stream bed that has an upwelling of water through the gravel. A spawning bed, called a redd, can be approximately 2 to 10 feet long and 1 to 6 feet wide, depending on the size of the fish.
It should be noted that by the time fish are ready to spawn, their eating quality has severely degraded. Salmon flesh that was once red, is now be white and mushy. In every state, it is illegal to disturb spawning fish. The best eating fish are those fresh out of salt water and not the fish that are ready to propagate the species.
Once the first redd is finished, the male and female align themselves next to one another for the actual spawning ritual. Their bodies quivering next to one another, the female releases her eggs at the same time that the male releases milt. Fertilization occurs in the water as the eggs drift down into the gravel.
After the eggs have settled, the female swims upstream and sweeps the river bottom with her tail to cover the nest of eggs with clean gravel. The female will then proceed to dig another redd at a nearby location and the male will accompany her to protect the area. Learn more about these amazing creatures in the video below and see live salmon runs at Spawn USA.
Join Sally as she adventures from fresh water to salt water and back again to teach Chipper about the life of a salmon, science and nature. It’s a magical journey through streams, rivers, and up fish ladders to the sea. Chipper and Sally help grow little ambassadors of nature into future stewards of the environment.
Part of the award-winning series, Let’s Go Chipper!™ Into the Great Outdoors, Sally the Salmon is an eco-educational adventure inspiring respect for nature in young children. For teachers the story is correlated meeting national academic standards in science, social skills, and arts & literature.
Kids listen and watch as Chipper, the squirrel along with Paisley, and Rusty, go below nature’s surface to explore the sea. The playful lessons include learning about habitats, salmon and underwater life, recycling, environmentalism, and the importance of keeping our waterways clean. Let’s Go Chipper this spawning season!
Fall is officially here and the evidence is all around us! From shorter days, to falling leaves, to the coming Harvest Moon–Autumn is one of the most beautiful seasonal changes! Show us your photography skills and enter your best photo that shows the changing season or how you enjoy the Autumn season in Chipper’s Fall Photo Contest! The winner will receive Let’s Go Chipper’s Fall Fun Package along with our Get Ready to Fly Kit! Fly like a Leaf with our kit that includes a cute plushy back-pack and a fun activity book for the next time you travel with the kids. Plus, we’ll add some surprise Fall goodies for you and the kids! Don’t forget to vote for your favorite entry and share once you’ve entered!
We all enjoy the colors of autumn leaves. The changing fall foliage never fails to surprise and delight us. Have you and your little one’s ever wondered why and how fall leaves change colors? Why a maple leaf turns bright red? Where do the yellows and oranges come from? To answer those questions, we first have to understand what leaves are and what they do.
Leaves are nature’s food factories. Plants take water from the ground through their roots. They take a gas called carbon dioxide from the air. Plants use sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into oxygen aneaves are nature’s food factories. Plants take water from the ground through their roots. They take a gas called carbon dioxide from the air. Plants use sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and glucose. Oxygen is a gas in the air that we need to breathe. Glucose is a kind of sugar. Plants use glucose as food for energy and as a building block for growing. The way plants turn water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and sugar is called photosynthesis. That means “putting together with light.” A chemical called chlorophyll helps make photosynthesis happen. Chlorophyll is what gives plants their green color.
As summer ends and autumn comes, the days get shorter and shorter. This is how the trees “know” to begin getting ready for winter.
During winter, there is not enough light or water for photosynthesis. The trees will rest, and live off the food they stored during the summer. They begin to shut down their food-making factories. The green chlorophyll disappears from the leaves. As the bright green fades away, we begin to see yellow and orange colors. Small amounts of these colors have been in the leaves all along. We just can’t see them in the summer, because they are covered up by the green chlorophyll!
The bright reds and purples we see in leaves are made mostly in the fall. In some trees, like maples, glucose is trapped in the leaves after photosynthesis stops. Sunlight and the cool nights of autumn cause the leaves turn this glucose into a red color. The brown color of trees like oaks is made from wastes left in the leaves.
It is the combination of all these things that make the beautiful fall foliage colors we enjoy each year!
Helping Hands Fall Tree Craft:
Take your little one’s outside to observe and find some colorful Fall leaves! Se if they can name all the colors, and for older children, help them identify what kind of tree each leaf comes from. Once you’ve collected some Fall leaves, you can dry and flatten them in some thick, heavy books while you make a your Helping Hands Fall Tree!
Autumn is the Harvest season so let’s harvest healthy habits with Chipper’s Helping Hands Craft. Print out some some hands from this link or copy and save this image:
Then get some recycled cardboard and brown construction paper and make your tree! We just used some scissors and tape for this one:
Have your children write or draw how they help family, their friends, their community or the planet on their Helping Hand. Then color it and cut it out and tape or glue to your tree! This is a great project for teachers to do in the classroom and you can even add some of your real Fall leaves you found to the tree!
Are you Chipper for Parks? Do you want to give back to the community and nature? Come join Chipper and friends every Saturday until March 16th, 2013 at the Presidio Shoreline to help keep Crissy Fields stay clean of trash and invasive weeds. Volunteering is a way to help support your community and to teach your kids how to help out. It’s also a beautiful way to spend a summer day and connect with the family!
Marsh Center
Volunteers are also needed to help keep these public areas maintained as popular destinations for both local and worldwide visitors to use and enjoy. Projects include winter beach clean-ups, weeding, vegetation pruning, sand removal, and trail maintenance. Project locations are at Crissy Field and along the coastal regions of the Presidio, including East Beach, Crissy Airfield, Crissy Promenade, Baker Beach, and China Beach. Walk in volunteers are welcome or register here. Groups of 5 or more volunteers must register in advance and a special project can be arranged just for you!
Volunteers ages 10 and up are welcome. With young volunteers, adult chaperones are required.
No experience necessary. Training and tools will be provided. Ability to do manual physical labor, lift and move objects, repeatedly kneel and bend at the waist, and learn to use a variety of hand tools. Fulfills community service requirements.
Bring the appropriate waiver forms (go to link at bottom).
Please wear clothes that can get dirty, long pants, close-toed shoes, layers for changing weather, and rain gear if necessary. Also, bring a personal water bottle and sunscreen.
Can’t make it out on Saturdays? Give back in another way by purchasing a Chipper for Parks badge. A portion of what you pay goes to a park of your choice in your name! Also, check out our book “Let’s Stroll with Crissy Fields” to learn more about the beautiful diversity in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Meet Elroy, the Great Egret and take his tour learning about the history of Crissy Field, plants and animals, and the tides and marshes!
Schedule Meeting Location varies. We will meet on site for the workday. Call (415) 447-9376 to hear the updated schedule.
Into the Great Outdoors with Chipper the Squirrel! Camping, hiking, and outdoor fun - Chipper playfully teaches young children good character and a love for the environment in this award winning children's series!
With Let's Go Chipper iPhone and iPad App, Chipper entertains while playfully educating children about nature and the great outdoors. Download our Award Winning App for easy fun on-the-go. Download now!
During winter, there is not enough light or water for photosynthesis. The trees will rest, and live off the food they stored during the summer. They begin to shut down their food-making factories. The green chlorophyll disappears from the leaves. As the bright green fades away, we begin to see yellow and orange colors. Small amounts of these colors have been in the leaves all along. We just can’t see them in the summer, because they are covered up by the green chlorophyll!
