Nature Gratitude: Bees

One component of our weekly Class Meeting is Nature Gratitude.  We go around our circle, and each of us shares something we noticed in nature that week that we were grateful to see.  Unlike Joys and Sorrows, Nature Gratitude is not optional.  Everyone must share a nature observation s/he appreciated.  This accomplishes more than one goal.  It pushes shy members of our group to participate, to venture out of their shells just a  little bit, and to practice oral presentation skills.  However, it also pushes children to notice the natural world around them.  We are lucky on our campus that every classroom opens to the outdoors.  Our classroom opens onto a beautiful courtyard, filled with vegetable gardens and a butterfly garden.  In our travels from the classroom to recess/PE, lunch in the cafeteria, or dismissal at the front of the school, we regularly see butterflies, dragonflies, praying mantids, bees, ladybugs, birds, squirrels, and more.  When we start the year, the Nature Gratitude portion of our meeting can take a long time, as we wait for each child (especially our new first years) to think of something from nature that s/he appreciates.  However, as the year progresses, it is wonderful to see that most children have noticed (and remembered) something amazing to share.



Bees Summer 2015

This week, I am grateful for pollinators.  In particular: bees.  Last year, a colony of bees appeared in a hole in a pine tree in my parents' front yard.  At first, we worried a frightened neighbor would notice them and spray insecticide on them.  Fortunately, the people who have looked up to notice them have just been curious.  The temperament of this colony seems pretty docile, not aggressive at all.  It's fascinating to stand under the tree and watch their busy work. 


Bees Summer 2016







It is interesting to watch the colony ebb and flow.  At this time of the school year, when we are saying goodbye to our third years and preparing to welcome new first graders to our community, the cycle seems especially relevant.  The bees are limited by their space in the tree.  As their colony grows, periodically they swarm with piles of bees on the surface of the hive, and then they split the colony.  A portion of the bees fly away to establish a new colony somewhere else, and the remaining bees stay behind to begin the process of rebuilding their community. 

"Cycles do what cycles do.  They build, rise, crest, and begin again.  That is the nature of schools.  Love dearly each beginning.  Mourn dearly each good-bye.  Begin again."

--Catherine McTamaney, The Tao of Montessori

You can observe bees up-close in the Cockrell Butterfly Center at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.


There's a Book for That!
The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco
The Bee Man by Laurie Krebs
The Life and Times of the Honeybee by Charles Micucci
The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive by Joanna Cole
Kids Discover: Bees

Say goodbye with pancakes

Today, we say goodbye to this school year and send our third-years on their way to Upper Elementary.  It is always a bitter-sweet day.  To soften the transition, we celebrate with pancakes!

Each cooperative group works together one last time to make breakfast and then sits down at the table to eat together and celebrate their year of learning exploration.




With the support of parent volunteers, the children make scrambled eggs,

pancakes,

banana-orange-yogurt smoothies with a squirt of honey and some mint from our courtyard garden,

and real whipped cream to top fresh strawberries.


The children get the opportunity to tackle challenges such as whisking (and more whisking...and more whisking),















cracking eggs,

measuring ingredients,

and flipping pancakes.

The reward for their labor is to sit down and enjoy each other's food and company.

Meanwhile, another group begins cooking.
When one group is finished eating, they work together to clear and set the table for the next group.

On this special day, children are invited to get comfy with pillows and books for a read-a-thon

or enjoy board games and other non-electronic fun.

checkers

mancala

folding paper airplanes and testing for the best design

Fun in the Sun

But not without sunscreen!

After we've sealed up our classroom and pushed it to the side, in preparation for summer, it's important that the learning continue, even without our usual materials.  Instead of independent work, we spend the last days before we say goodbye together in community. 

When I asked the children to brainstorm about fun learning activities they'd like to do together the last days of school, one of the things on the list was science experiments.  Of course, I love that!

A colleague was clearing out a cabinet in preparation for summer storage and came across a box of Solar UV beads.  These beads are a perfect opportunity for an experiment designed to teach sun safety. 

For this experiment, you will need:
* UV beads (I snuck outside and sorted the beads in the sunlight so that each group got 4 beads of a single color)
* pipe cleaners (4 for each group)
* 3 Q-tips for each group for applying the "mystery coatings"
* A set of 4 hole-punched index cards for each group, labeled Control, #1, #2, #3
* Mystery Coating 1
* Mystery Coating 2
* Mystery Coating 3

For the mystery coatings, I selected three white substances that were about the same creamy consistency and transferred samples into containers labeled 1, 2, and 3.

First, the children observe their beads in the classroom, where they look like plain white translucent pony beads.

Next, they take their bowl of four beads outside into the sunlight, where they change dramatically. 

Next, the children take the beads into the shade and observe.

The children return to the classroom and observe as the beads return to their colorless status.

Now that we've done some experimenting with how the beads behave, we are ready to add the mystery coatings.

A pipe cleaner is pushed through each bead and then looped through the hole in one of the index cards.  The bead on the card labeled "Control" is left without any coating.  For each of the others, the mystery coating identified on the card's label is applied to the bead with a Q-tip.  Remind the children to use a fresh Q-tip with each coating.

Each group took their coated beads outside to find out which mystery coating is most effective in blocking UV rays.

The big reveal

Control: no coating

Mystery Coating 1: plain yogurt

Mystery Coating 2: sunscreen

Mystery Coating 3: lotion

 

Sunscreen (Mystery Coating #2) is the clear winner!  Apply regularly when you are exploring outdoors this summer!

Better than cable:

Dinos After Dark

If you've read Night at the Museum or seen the movies by the same name, you may have wondered what really goes on in museums after they close.

Actually, that's usually when I find myself there!  I volunteer at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, but because I teach on weekdays, mostly I am either helping out in the field or at the museum after dark.  I love poking around the museum when it's closed and we have the gorgeous Paleontology Hall to ourselves.

A few times a year, a small crew (usually 3-4 of us) assembles to dust the dinosaurs.

You might have visions of cute feather dusters, but Dave steers a lift to get up close to the fossils, and John wields a wand, attached by an air line to a compressor, to spray pressurized air that knocks the dust off the old bones.

My jobs include making sure the electrical cords and air line are not smashed by the wheels of the lift, vacuuming the petrified wood, dusting the wall mounts ever so carefully with a makeup brush, and occasionally vacuuming the tops of the walls that divide the space and guide your journey
through the hall.

Staring into the skeletal face of a dinosaur




or stepping into the ammonite garden to brush dust from the giant ammonites (my favorite fossil--doesn't everyone have a favorite fossil?) creates a more intimate relationship with the past than the casual visitor gets.  It feels as if I'm checking in with old friends.





The shadows are more dramatic at night, and the quiet shifts the hall to more of a meditative sanctuary than a field trip destination.

This time, though, we were not entirely alone. First, we were joined by painters, freshening up the white of the walls and exhibit bases.  Seeing the dinos in their booties, like respectful workmen on new carpet, made me giggle.

Next, we were joined by a school group from Louisiana who were spending the night at the museum.  Clipboards in hand, they were on a scavenger hunt mission in the hall.  On the heels of Screen-Free Week, I was overjoyed to hear one young man remark, "Dude, this is better than cable T.V.!  Seriously.  Look at all these dinosaurs!"

Happy Mother's Day!

Little elves have been busy in Room 15, creating beautiful magnet gifts for the important women in their lives.












This is a great re-use project to do on the heels of Earth Day, but I didn't plan far enough in advance to collect enough Altoids tins without asking parents.  So I had to send out a last-minute e-mail plea (well, 2 weeks ahead).  A very generous friend worried that the children would not bring in enough tins and someone (or more than one someone) would be without.  So he purchased a case of Altoids at Costco. With those, along with what the children did bring in and the ones I found squirreled away in my "children's crafts" box, we had plenty!

I spent a Friday night visiting two Walmarts, a Jo-Ann, and a Michael's to gather the necessary supplies:
* Clear gel glue
* Glass marbles (One big bag from Walmart for ~$4.70 was more than enough for our class of 24!)
* Lovely printed craft papers (On sale at Jo-Ann)
* Magnets (This year, I sprang for the peel-and-stick dot magnets from Walmart)--4 for each student

To reduce waste, I cut the papers into 4x3" rectangles (to line and cover the tins) and inch-wide strips (to be cut into circles for the magnets).
The children selected their papers,

and began to cut and craft.

They were angelically peaceful, absorbed in their work!

The results are just gorgeous!  Every child is so very proud of the gift s/he created.