Chesapeake Chills and Thrills

Spooky stories, creepy critters, monster hunts, and more. There are plenty of ways to teach about the Chesapeake Bay watershed this Halloween. Many even provide an opportunity for in-depth investigations into watershed history or science. Which scary Chesapeake activity will you choose?

• Here there be Monsters - What’s lurking beneath the surface of the Chesapeake Bay? Is it an unidentified sea monster that hasn’t yet been discovered? Are people possibly mistaking another animal such as a manatee or sturgeon for a sea monster? Or, is the mysterious and elusive Chessie the sea monster, a hoax or the product of some wild imaginations? Using the Bayville interactive, Here There Be Monsters, students unravel the mystery of Chessie the sea monster, using their own powers of investigation and deductive reasoning to make an informed judgment about whether or not Chessie is real.
• Death at Jamestown - What Really Happened at Jamestown? In this jigsaw lesson plan, students learn about four different, supported reasons behind the mysterious deaths that occurred in the early days of the colony of Jamestown. In this lesson, middle and high school students will discover different scientific methods for evaluating historical events, research and present information on proposed explanations of a historical event, and evaluate explanations of a historical event based on supporting scientific evidence.
• Celebrate Halloween by Teaching about Creepy, Crawly Marcoinvertebrates - It’s Halloween in the Chesapeake Bay watershed! This is a perfect opportunity to introduce your students to the creepy creatures lurking beneath rocks in your local stream. While benthic macroinvertebrates may appear gruesome at first glance, a closer look reveals that these organisms are perfectly adapted to live and feed in their environment.
• BOO!s of the Bay: Nine scary Chesapeake stories for Halloween - Look around the Chesapeake Bay watershed this time of year, and you’ll find ghost tours all over the place: Annapolis, Gettysburg and Richmond, to name a few. And why wouldn’t there be ghosts here? The Chesapeake region was among the first areas in the United States settled by English colonists. Since that time, the Bay has experienced land-altering and life-taking hurricanes, mysterious shipwrecks, and bloody battles during the nation’s early wars. Just in time for Halloween, the Chesapeake Bay Program has compiled an eclectic list of hauntings, sightings and purely strange spooks from throughout the Bay watershed. Share these spooky stories with your students, have them research the facts behind one, or use them to inspire your students to write their own Chesapeake ghost stories!