You are Spec-tacul-air Superheroes who must stop the Pollutinators from harming Birch Cove’s air. Your superpowers allow you to shrink into tiny air specs to discover where air goes and how it changes. Find out how the Pollutinators poison the air and how to stop them. Put on your superhero capes.

Transform yourselves into very tiny oxygen air specs through spec spinning. Beware of nearby hazards when spinning as it’s easy to become dizzy and lose your balance.

1. Find a partner and hook arms.
2. Hold on tight and spin in a circle for 20 seconds.
3. Feel yourself shrinking as you become dizzy when you stop spinning.

When the dizziness passes, you are oxygen specs. You must travel as an oxygen molecule, which is a pair of oxygen specs (with an uneven number, create a trio). Hook arms and run down the trail to the next stop. Make windy “whooshing” noises as you go.

Oh no, you’ve been captured! Scream! A bat breathed you up its nose while it was searching for bugs to eat. The hair in the bat’s nose cleans you off.

1. Separate from your partner and roll on the grass.
2. Make yucky noises as you wiggle.

You are drawn into the bats lungs and injected into its blood.

1. Crouch down and make a sucking noise.
2. Flap your arms (wings) and squeak as you fly around looking for bugs.

Bats eat moths, mosquitoes and other flying insects. They use sound to locate their prey. Read the box below to find out more about how bats do this.

1. Mark with sticks a rough circle about three metres across on the grass.
2. Someone is the bat and wears a vision blocker. The rest are moths.
3. Everyone must stay within the circle during the game.
4. The bat says “beep” and the moths must respond by saying “bump”.
5. The bat keeps using this sound clue to try to tag the moths.
6. Moths that are tagged wait outside the circle.
7. The last moth tagged can become the bat for the next round.

Ah choo! You are sneezed out of the bat!

1. Make your biggest sneezing sound.
2. Fling yourself down onto the ground.
3. Get up and wipe off all the bat gunk.

You are ejected as part of a different molecule: carbon dioxide. It is made up of two oxygen specs and a spec of carbon. Whoosh up the trail as a carbon dioxide molecule, by linking arms with two other specs. If you listen closely, you may hear Pollutinators in the distance.

Air also carries smells. Smells are particles and fumes that are so tiny you can’t see them, but you can sure smell ‘em!

1. Separate from your molecules and find at least three neat-smelling trees.
2. Scratch the surface of the tree with your fingernail before smelling it.
3. Share your favourite smelling trees with others.

Can you sneak into a tree as an air spec using your superpowers? Go stand next to your favourite smelling tree.

1. Stretch your arms high and stand on your tiptoes.
2. Make slurping noises as you are sucked up into a leaf.
3. Hug your tree and close your eyes.

• You’re zipping along the tubes in the branches.
• You make a sharp turn down into the trunk and then up into another branch.
• Suddenly you’re in a new leaf and shot out into the air!

4. Scream as you run back to the trail as an oxygen spec again.
5. Hook up into pairs and float along the trail making swooshing sounds

Swish! You are part of the wind now. Compete against other gusts of air in a leaf race. Find a dry, dead leaf on the ground; not just any leaf—a fast leaf. Mark a starting line and a finishing line on the path, separated by three giant steps. To begin:

1. Racers get down behind their leaves on the starting line.
2. The starter says “go” and the racers blow their leaves to the finish line.
3. Racers cannot touch their leaves.

Continue along the trail in your oxygen molecule pairs.

Uh, oh! A squirrel came by and sucked you up its nose!

1. Crouch on the ground and put your hands in front of you like paws.
2. Make a sucking noise and jump high in the air.
3. Hop around and call “chitta, chitta.”

See how many types of squirrel food you can find nearby.

• acorns
• mushrooms
• seeds
• insects
• berries

The squirrel is stuffed and falls asleep. Relief! You are whooshed out the squirrel’s nose while it’s snoring:

1. Snort and do three somersaults on the ground.
2. You’re sent back out as carbon dioxide molecules again.
3. Run together to the next stop, swooshing as you go.

Take a closer look at some leaves as a free-floating air spec.

1. Make a collection of at least eight cool-looking dead leaves.
2. Find special leaves with different shapes and patterns.
3. Display them in a line on the ground.
4. Trade leaves with others to improve your collection.
5. Leave it on display for others who walk by.

Swish, now you are drawn towards a plant.

1. Choose a plant nearby with the coolest-looking leaves.
2. Look at one leaf, but don’t remove it from the plant.
3. Compare the top of the leaf to its underside.
4. Look really hard with your third eye for tiny little holes under the leaf. they are called “stomata.”

Uh, oh! The plant is sucking you into the leaf through its micro doors. Scream as you turn around three times.

Shuffle down the trail as you are carried along in the leaf.

Trees stand as still as statues. You are in a tree. Can you be that still?

1. Assign someone the role of the joker. The others are trees.
2. The trees find a comfortable position close by and freeze.
3. Trees cannot hide their faces or close their eyes.
4. The joker tries to make each one smile but cannot touch a tree.
5. Once a tree laughs, it becomes a joker as well.
6. See who is the last tree.

Escape before you become frozen in a tree. Run five giant steps and do three twirls. Poof! You’re ejected as oxygen specs again. Float down the trail.

Oh no, the Pollutinators stop you and challenge you to a game of Contamination.

1. Choose a Pollutinator. The Pollutinator tries to tag each spec and spread pollution pellets.
2. If tagged, a spec freezes and receives a pollution pellet from the Pollutinator.
3. Another spec can free the frozen spec by taking the spec by the hand to a tree.
4. The Pollutinator cannot tag specs when they’re paired up like this.
5. The contaminated spec touches the tree and is cleaned by it.
6. Once cleaned, the spec drops the pellet and is free to run from the Pollutinator again.
7. The Pollutinator picks up dropped pellets and reuses them when tagging other specs.

Take turns being the Pollutinator and clean up all the pellets at the end. What are three ways you contribute to air pollution?

If an air spec succeeds in getting cleaned by a tree, where does the pollution go? The box below will help you find the answers.

Continue floating down the trail.

You have figured out how Pollutinators poison the air, but you can’t stop them in spec form. You must be a clean spec to return to normal. Complete the lichen air quality test:

1. Look for gray or light green flaky stuff on a rock or tree— these are lichens.
2. Get down close and breathe on the lichen.

Take a close up picture of a beautiful lichen and upload it if you choose.

If the lichen is healthy, then it’s safe to return to your normal size. Do reverse spec spinning on a grassy section near here. After the dizziness passes, you are normal size again.

Return to the trail, walking back towards the start of the trail. As you go, find a nice tree or bush to sit by while you draw in your Adventure Journal. Before you sit down, say thank you to your tree or bush by taking in a deep breath and then blowing out. You just took in oxygen from the plant and gave it carbon dioxide!

Take a seat and draw or write in your Adventure Journal the creatures you moved through as air specs. Do you remember the different types of molecules you became in each creature? Use arrows to show how you travelled through the air cycle.

Finish by heading back to the trail entrance and parking lot to search for the mystery plaque, look around on a post below something electric! Make a rubbing of the mystery creature on the plaque in your Adventure Journal with the side of your pencil.

The plaque symbol is:

Good luck using your superpowers to help overcome the Pollutinators.