This study focuses on how students make sense of and understand concepts related to the study of a wetland. The analyses of students' talk and drawings recorded during a 2-week wetland unit were divided into two levels. The first level examined students' understandings and explored student traits that contributed to a clear, stable understanding of the wetland environment. Students' ideas seemed to fit patterns, which were categorized and discussed as strongly held ideas, developing ideas, easily altered ideas, and contradictory or confusing ideas. The second level of the analysis examined two of the students' sense-making processes, termed respectively a "scientific" process and a "storytelling" process. How students made sense of information seemed to be related to what they understood about the wetland. By providing a context within which students' actions could be observed and analyzed, the wetland study obtain information about how students' talk and play developed as their experience with concepts increased. Appended are copies of: (1) the consent form; (2) wildlife pictures; (3) metaphor interview; (4) teacher hand-outs; (5) curriculum outline; (6) field notes; and (7) student drawings. (KR)