Happy Earth Day! We started the day off with a little youtube that told us about the history of Earth Day. What year did it start? Ask your child. If they can tell you what year the first Earth Day began write in the planner for $10 tomorrow.
We read the book, Bad Ideas, at CC Meeting this morning. We then compiled a second version called Bad Ideas for the Earth. They were very cute!
In math today, we took a circle (a rice cake) and divided it into fractions as low as 1/8. We took a look at how much space in the entire world we have actually for just humans, plants, and animals. It turns out, unless you live in the water, life is pretty limited here. Kids covered 75% of their rice cake (3/4 in fractions) with jelly. This representing our water on Earth. We then read on to discover that only 1% of all this water is drinkable by humans. Wow! The leftover 1/4 is land. We covered this with peanut butter. We then had to divided the land section into halves creating two 1/8 pieces of Earth. On one half we placed marshmallows for glaciers and chocolate chips for rocky regions. This land was deemed uninhabitable. That meant that only 1/8 of our Earth is meant for land life. We represented this with grapes. It was really interesting to see how we are such a small section, yet humans have the ability to destroy an entire planet if make negative choices. It was also interesting to see how many kids balked at the idea of me putting leftover breakfast garbage on their jelly (throwing trash into our waters). I asked them to think about that when they feel the urge to litter on land or in the water.
In reading, we listened to the story, The Great Kapok Tree. It is all about animals saving their environment from humans. Habitat distraction is the number one reason many animals are going extinct. They create it, and we ruin it. We do it for good causes, but it really does effect more life than our own. Good for them to ponder over. They then made a 5 literal question quiz, exchanged it with a friends, took the other person's quiz, and then gave it back to grade. Pretty cool to see what they thought was most important to take away from the story.
Finally, we created our Earth Day craft. Kids used a compass to create a circle with a 3 inch radius. If you watch the slideshow below, you will see and hear how this was done. After making their Earth model, I asked them to write down five facts that they didn't know before learning it today. It will make a fun hall display soon.
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Speaking of hall displays, here is the one I promised you this weekend. We have received many compliments on this project. They loved all the different varieties and the American Indian tie-in. Awesome job Team Erickson!
Homework tonight is Mrs. Derrig's Secretary's Day cards. They came home with thank you cards. We talked in length about possibly adding in a personal story of a time that Mrs. Derrig helped them. If your child reads their's to you, please write DERRIG in the planner for $50 tomorrow. She is worth it! They know NOT to seal the envelopes. Please feel free to add your own message to the card as well.
I think that about covers it. Enjoy the calm before the storm!
Ms. Erickson
