Monday, February 22, 2010

February 22, 2010

Today Mr. Mark came to teach us. We love Mr. Mark on the account that he built our whole school. Also, when we write a note to ask him for something, things seem to get accomplished very quickly. We always give him our rapt attention.


We talked about how the plants outside are merely sleeping and NOT dead. We are expecting them to wake from hibernation very soon.


Mr. Mark and Ms. Kelsey made us signs with a picture of a sleeping baby plant for us to scatter among our own sleeping plants. We will see these signs and they will remind us to not step on the plants or bushes in our garden.


We went outside to plant the signs in the garden.




Our buddies came today and preformed a skit for us about Pennies for Peace - a fundraiser to buy books and supplies for students in Pakistan.



We also started our penny collection for Pennies for Peace. During centers, we took turns counting our pennies. Before we counted, we first estimated how many pennies we had in our pile. It took alot of persistence, concentration and patience to count our pennies. Some friends had over 100 pennies. We learned that 100 pennies equals $1.



During afternoon centers, we experimented with blubber. We put our gloved hands into a bowl of ice water. Our hands were freezing! We could only keep them in the water for a few seconds. If felt uncomfortable to put our bare hands in the water.




We then put our gloved hand into a bag of blubber. We dunked the blubber bag in the water. We could not feel the cold water through all the blubber! Most of us said we could keep our hand in the freezing water all day as long as it was surrounded by blubber!




We realized that if animals don't hibernate or migrate, they have to find other ways (adaptations) to survive the winter. Blubber is one of the ways animals in winter stay warm!

2 comments:

  1. I love the science activity! I bet the kids enjoyed it a lot.

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  2. Dear Katie,

    I used the same experiment during a unit on arctic animals. Another idea is to fill a sandwich bag with air and lay it under a bag of ice to let the children see how it keeps the cold away from the skin.

    I love your pictures!

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