Call them adventurers, even pioneers. Fourth-graders from Whidbey Island Waldorf School in Clinton are circumnavigating Whidbey Island.

A group of 11 students led by teacher Natasha Zimmerman is doing what few of us have done. They’re trekking and mapping the shoreline of Whidbey Island.

They began their journey on Sept. 12 on Ebey’s Prairie. Since then, they have made 19 weekly trips along the island’s beaches, and have 12 more trips to go.

Every Friday morning at about 8:45 a.m., the students head out to start where they ended the week before. Lunches and water bottles are stashed in backpacks along with tablets, colored pencils and rain gear. Compasses dangle from backpack straps. Each student has a walking stick, picked up along some beach sometime during the past five months.

In tow are parent volunteers, who shepherd the group wherever it explores.

This is a group that knows what it’s doing and how to do it together. There’s no shyness here. Ask one student a question and the others immediately pipe up with a story. Just ask them what they’ve seen, what their favorite discovery was.

For Amy Arand, it was the time she saw an eagle grab a seagull and fly off with it for lunch. Sam Rector remembers the day he found 136 dead salmon on the beach. Taya Jae likes to talk about seeing a high tide against a bulkhead where the “parents had to piggy back us across.”

They all remember the baby seal that waddled down the beach into the water, and the eagles that seem to follow them along the way.

Then there was Feb. 6, when they battled 40 mph winds.

“We had to turn around and walk the other way for awhile,” Zimmerman said.

Last Friday, the group’s route was from Glendale to Sandy Hook, with a lunch stop at Possession Point Park. Though they may not have been thinking about it school was in session even out on the almost untraveled beaches between these two communities.

“It’s much more than a geography class,” Zimmerman said. “Students are learning about topography, weather and tides. They are developing math and English skills.”

And don’t forget physical education.

“They have learned they can go farther and longer than they believed they could” Zimmerman said.

Homework for the class is journaling the morning’s activities using selected vocabulary words. On top of that, the students are learning the nearly lost art of map making. Over the 31 weeks of hikes, each student is mapping the route in a notebook, drawing in the shoreline, docks, houses and other permanent structures they pass.

They map sections from one point to another. Between Glendale and Sandy Hook, the students had three or four pages of fine detail of the area.

The most pages devoted to a single hike was for the longest one so far, a 6.2 miles beach hike.

When the students finish their drawing and hiking, they will compile their drawings into a single, giant map of Whidbey Island’s beaches.

Life isn’t always a beach for the class. In some places, the beach is inaccessible, forcing the students to across country and even through the cities of Oak Harbor and Langley.

On the hikes, beach collecting is generally not allowed. However, each day, one student is selected to find a treasure to take back to school.

“Otherwise we leave everything the way we found it,” Zimmerman said.

Some treasures include a piece of beach glass and a message in a bottle.

As with any expedition, a support staff is necessary. In this case the staff consists of parent volunteers. Several walk each week with the class while others drive the students to and from the beginning and ending of each hike.

Adult volunteer Noel Stevens, checks the routes, tides and in some cases gains permission from private property owners prior to each field trip.

Stevens marks the end of the hike with a large branch stuck in the ground. Dubbed Odin’s Spear after the Norse god of mythology, it is a welcome sight on the longest hike days.

This Friday, the students will be in the Maxwelton area.

Class participants are Rudi Hamsa, Amy Arand, Brianna Haimes, Sam Rector, Natalie Rehberger, Gabe Frishman, Elijah Stevens, Taya Jae, Lela Pigott, Noah Moeller and Michael Agate.