After our outdoor animal jobs, I caught the class up on a little Farm News. We've had some pig escapees thanks to the electric fence being left unplugged. You see, most of the animals, once they know that the fence will shock them, will leave it alone. Not pigs! They will continue to test it... and I really believe they can hear the "click" that the fence makes when it is on! After talking about our week away from each other, the class listened to the rest of the James Herriot story, "Moses the Kitten". Our farm has had an increase in mice over the last few weeks so we may be adding extra barn cat rescues, and this story was a perfect fit! In the story, the kitten is adopted by a momma sow. I told stories of how different animals here on the farm have adopted other baby animals over the years. The kids love hearing all of those crazy stories! At home, they will have a creative writing prompt that deals with animals adopting other animals.
Last week, the class learned about how technology has made things like trimming cows' hooves easier and less stressful. At home, they imagined what new technology would be like in the future! Some of the inventions that they came up with inventions were super efficient, some were luxurious, and some were downright silly! Next, I used pasture fencing to teach the concept of perimeter and area. At first, we discussed how to measure perimeter using simple numbers. Once they all grasped the idea, we talked about calculating area. We took this a step further and learned to calculate the area for pastures that were L shaped. I taught them that, as long as the shape was made up of right angles, you can divide up the shape into rectangular pieces to find each individual area. Then, you add them together. I shared some easy ways to calculate large numbers that end in zeros. I think it was a great math-integration day in agriculture!
We discussed some of the key points in the first five chapters of Island of the Blue Dolphins. We went over the worksheets on active and passive voice, as well. Some need a little extra practice recognizing those boring "to be" verbs, but a lot of the students were getting very creative with their rewrites! Next, the class took out the field guides. They shared the plants, animals, landforms, and survival skills that they encountered in the book. Again, the goal here isn't to list everything, but to choose some of the things that interest them, or that the book describes in detail, and write about those in the notebook. The class loved sharing these! We will keep the large encyclopedias in class so that we can continue to research and add things as the interests arise.
We have been learning about Central American countries. I was so very impressed with how well they remembered the locations of different countries from the videos! Any time you can use little funny sayings, songs, or rhymes to help remember information, it helps it to stick! We went through and talked about the different Central American counties and colored them in on individual maps. We also learned the capitals of each. The class will be taking a quiz over these locations next week. We will also be zooming in on some of the key countries over the next two weeks!
During science, we reviewed the three domains: Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryote. I'm not interested in learning each part of the cell at this point, but we did need to understand a few concepts about cells in order to understand how these organisms are classified. First, I explained the role of cell membranes. The class learned that animal cells have membranes and can have irregular shapes, but plant cell have a more rigid cell wall. The class learned about the nucleus and labeled it on a diagram. We did not talk about the different organelles, but I just wanted them to understand that the cells of some organisms do have membrane-bound organelles. They learned the prefix "uni-", as in unicycle, and unicorn. This made the concept of unicellular and multicellular organisms much easier to understand! Finally, we talked about the meaning of prokaryotes (no nucleus or organelles) and eukaryotes (have a nucleus and organelles). We will be learning about the six kingdoms at home and discussing them in detail in upcoming weeks.
The class headed outside for a little nature investigation. Each student mentally "gathered" living things that were outside here at the farm. We recorded these on the board, sorting them into categories. Then, I shared one of my own. I took a pipet and sucked up a little bit of stagnant water from outside. Then, we looked at it under a microscope to see small bits of algae and other small organisms that weren't visible with the naked eye. The kids loved using the microscope! It helped them to realize that the things that we are learning about aren't just academic information... it is everywhere! I was able to find some excellent rotifers the night before, but I couldn't spot them in class today. I promised them that we would keep the microscopes out and catch those quick little guys next week!
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