Our connections and PP to the challenge weeks can be found at My Wakelet, a tool provided this year that I like more than the Goggle classroom and blogging for my teaching and learning from now on. After reflecting on the differences between weather (clothing for the day-is it hot or cold) and climate (all the clothing in your closet- some for warm climate-spring and summer, some for cold climate-fall/winter), the children made a poster of the seasons and the "normal" climate during the seasons. Then, we watched the Earth has a Fever by Nasa and a 45-minute cartoon of Zake's Adventure-The Earth Has a Fever. The children concluded, "the penguins did not care about the garbage around them in Zake's Adventures. That is one cause for the earth's fever." We must care and clean up our garbage as the penguins did."
As the children were making seasons dioramas with shaving cream and leaves and after watching the Zake video, they noticed two things, which they concluded as causes:
Global: The ice is melting where the polar bears live. They will not have a way to transport themselves to get food. They will die if they do not adapt and the ice is melting faster than the bears can learn how to change ways to survive.
Local The fall leaves are beautiful and they are a natural resource for our art pieces, but it felt funny to be wearing summer clothing during the fall. We are having warmer weather during the fall in New England. Last year, they learned how the warmer weather in New England affected the production of their favorite pancake syrup, "Maple Syrup".
