Diving into the Desert

We are studying different habitats in science. We started with the desert. We did two centers today dealing with sand. Yesterday we touched on sand dunes, today we delved more deeply into this concept. Today we learned about 4 specific types of dunes. The children got to try to create these dunes using sand and straws. It is hard to see but on the blue paper is an example of what these dunes look like and on the tan paper (written in blue) is how to make the dunes. Below are pictures of the kids hard at work! We learned new words today like windward side, leeward side, slumping, and saltation.

Here is our second center. This had more to do with the concept of weathering and erosion. The students used hand lens to look at a piece of sand paper. Then they had to rub a piece of smooth chalk on the sandpaper. By doing this, the sandpaper left rough scratches in the chalk which was meant to show how sand pelting rocks caused weathering and erosion. The kids had a blast with both centers!

Fun with Food Chains

We learned all about food chains and food webs. Children were asked to recreate a food chain. They were given the option of drawing it on a paper or using the "paper chains" to create their food chain. You can see which option was more popular!

On the left is Kinsey's food chain. It starts with the sun because all green plants need the sun to grow. Then moves on to the plant, fish, and eagle.
Below that is Ian's- he started with the sun, kelp, fish, penguin, seal, and great white shark.

Marshmallow Towers

We started our unit on measurement in math today. We talked about standard and metric and then did a fun activity. We had a competition to see who could build the tallest tower using 20 marshmallows and 15 toothpicks. Thai and Ian were our winners with a tower that was 3.5 inches high! After our activity we talked about ways that we could have done a better job. The students thought that bigger marshmallows and more toothpicks would have made a big difference. At the end of our measurement unit we will try this activity again with those changes and see how different our results are!

Great Egg-spectations!

The day has finally arrived!! The "Chicken Man" came to school today to drop off our chicken eggs and incubators.

Here he is with his lovely assistant Casey trying to determine if an egg can breathe.
This is a picture of our six eggs and the incubator. Keep your fingers crossed that we have some hatch! The "Chicken Man" said it was no guarantee that any will hatch successfully- so we are trying to think positively!

Once the incubator reached the appropriate temperature of 100 degrees we were able to place the eggs in. I labeled the eggs with an X and an O on opposite sides. We need to turn the eggs three time a day- so the labeling will help us know when we have a complete turn.

I made a schedule to ensure that we made the correct amount of turns each day.

Here is a picture of Cameron, Jack L, and Jake taking a look at our eggs in the incubator in their "looking position."