Photo by Samantha Davis. (Left to right, face forward) Lynd middle school students Olivia Hlavka, (music teacher) Nancy Louwagie, Katherine Maldonado and Shaila Chavarria work together to come up with a song during an environmental field trip at Camden State Park Monday morning.

LYND — Middle school students of Lynd Public School stepped out of the classroom on Monday for its annual environmental day at Camden State Park, engaging in a range of outdoor activities.

Music teacher Nancy Louwagie and physical education teacher Jennifer Louwagie accompanied the trip this year with science teacher Martin Boucek. The students split in groups and spent the day fishing, creating music, attending an informational recycling presentation from the Lyon County Environmental office and doing gym class around Redwood River at Camden.

“We’ve always had different classes (come on the field trip), and we always have the Lyon County Environmental office here,” Boucek said. “We’ve had alternative energy presenters, we’ve had different things … They’ve brought art (class) before.”

The science students went to Camden last week to help the DNR release brown trout into the stream for Saturday’s trout fishing opener, which the students came back to try to catch.

However, Boucek mentioned there were several people out over the weekend catching fish, which could have played a factor into the student’s quiet fishing experience.

Catching the lone fish of the day, Axel Evans reeled in a trout right as the class was preparing to pack up and head out.

“If they release the fish, they want to get a chance to try and catch them,” Jennifer said. “Not all kids can fish at once, so we spread out the activities. We have the recycling (presentation), music classes, we got everything.”

Nancy had her groups get creative with instruments they brought along, like drums and nearly 100 donated soda bottles from Brau Brothers.

“They are working on songs they are going to perform for us,” Nancy said.

Boucek said this is about the fifth year they have done the environment day field trip, and tries to switch it up with the activities each time out, to pair with the fishing.

The science students will wrap up their trout study in the coming weeks, by releasing the rainbow trout they have been growing in the classroom since December. Boucek partners with Trout in the Classroom, an environmental education program, for the study, and this is the second year doing so.

“The ones we hatch (rainbow trout) from little eggs … It is a native Minnesota fish,” Boucek said. “They are beautiful. They have just so many different colors on them.”

The environmental day brought along about 60 total students, from fifth to eighth graders.