Creating Bear Cupcakes

Bear Biologist Shares His Knowledge

Baby Animals and Eggs, A Sure Sign of Spring

I have been absolutely amazed by the gift of teaching opportunities this year. God has truly blessed my students and I with teachable moments. This afternoon I was informing my class about a second grade student at our school who has her own Community Service Club called, Kids That Kare. We invited this student to come to our classroom to share about her club when we started our Community Service project. Her visit was scheduled, but then she became ill, so we had to reschedule for next week. While I was informing my class of a Kids that Kare meeting afterschool tomorrow, there was a knock at the door. It was the mother of the student who will be visiting our class. She knows I love teachable moments and popped in with a teeny tiny surprise. Her hands were cupped as she approached me to ask me if I'd like her to share. She opened her hands as if they were hinged like a clam shell. I got a quick peek, but wasn't sure what I had just seen. So I had to ask. It was a 5 day old bunny.

This student found soft shelled turtle eggs at his ranch and brought several in to share. He was very excited about his find and couldn't wait to share his animal knowledge. I didn't want to rain on his parade in front of his peers, so we had a sidebar about being careful not to disturb wildlife, returning it to where it was found and not to hold creatures captive, especially if an animal is protected. During the baby bunny visit Mrs. Smith and I had an opportunity to discuss this with the whole class, using the bunny as an example. This baby had clearly been abandoned.

Neigh-BEAR-hood Watch Kids Finish Their Bear Campaign Shirts

Bear t-shirts hot off the press!

 

These students are removing the cardboard from inside the shirts.

Here's a video of my students in their Florida Black Bear Campaign t-shirts they stenciled. They are reciting the Bear Project mission statement they wrote. An idea inspired through The Leader in Me. Our class wrote a mission statement about school for our classroom. Then the students each wrote their own personal mission statement. While brainstorming for their Florida Black Bear project, one of my students said our campaign needed a mission statement so people would know what we were doing.

Next task, a table covering for the Neigh-BEAR-hood Watch Kids Bear Project booth. The students will be decorating the table covering with bear paw prints. Such clever students I have.

Power of Persuasion

As part of my students' Black Bear Community Service Learning project they want people to decorate cupcakes to look like bears. The idea is that when people visit their Neigh-BEAR-hood Watch Kids' booth at our schools' annual Hoedown the students will teach people about bears while they make a bear cupcake. Well, we will need a lot of cupcakes, plus other ingredients for this project, so we wrote letters to Publix asking for help. The children wrote letters explaining their project and what they need to make the project a success. This made a great persuasive writing lesson, it was meaningful and had a real world connection.

 

Friday after school, this student and I went to the office to check my mailbox for mail. We were pleasantly surprised to find a letter from Publix.

 

We couldn't wait to see what Publix had to say about helping us with our project.

To our amazement Publix graciously sent our class a $100.00 giftcard. We will be writing lots of Thank-you letters on Monday. More purposeful writing. Yay! I love it when a project comes together!

Mangrove Tangle Snack

Our recipe for cooking was inspired by this weeks' lesson on mangroves. I was researching online lesson plans to build my students' background knowledge before our visitors from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection education team came to our classroom. During my research I found this recipe, but made some slight modifications. We used salty rice cakes instead of plain rice cakes, since a mangrove grows in salt water. The water for our snack was made from cream cheese tinted with blue food coloring, however we added a dash of powdered ranch dressing mix for flavor. We used curvy pretzels instead of straight pretzels, since they look more like mangrove roots. The original recipe added a lettuce canopy, but we left that part off. For a final touch we added Goldfish crackers instead because the mangrove is home to many species of fish.

 

 

The children mixed an ounce of cream cheese, 1/8 teaspoon of Ranch dressing mix and 2 drops of blue food coloring with a plastic knife in a cup.

They spread the cream cheese water onto the salty rice cake island.

Next they broke their pretzels into pieces and poked them into the cream cheese to look like mangrove roots.

 

Then they added Goldfish cracker fish.

 

Care to try some?

Hands-on Mangroves

In Scott Foresman Reading Unit 2, one of the nonfiction texts is about mangrove forests. The text is modeled after a magazine article. The correlating main selection story was called, "Life in the Forest." After reading the two texts students were asked to compare the different types of forests. We actually finished this Unit weeks ago, but pulled the books back out this week to revisit the article about the Mangrove Forests. Through our Florida Black Bear Community Service Learning Project our class has made some connections with resource people around the State of Florida. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection Resource team from Fort Myers came to our town for a Community Education Night at our local Ag Center. The team asked if our class would be interested in learning about mangroves, since they were in town. My students were very excited about this opportunity and waited in anticipation for the team's visit. .

 

Several years ago, I met the author of this book, The Sea, The Storm and The Mangrove Tangle. I pulled it off the shelf and blew the dust off the cover. What a great opportunity to incorporate a rich piece of literature that is not part of the core reading program. Lynne Cherry is an author, illustrator and naturalist. All of her books have a common theme of protecting animals and the environment. I purchased several of her books and had her sign them. The message she wrote in this one was, "For Sheli, Please help protect the mangrove and the natural places near where you live, Lynne Cherry 5/2007" You can bet I shared this with my students.

 

Can't believe I was able to find this photograph of me with the author Lynne Cherry from May 2007.

 

 

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection Resource Team came to our classroom to teach us about mangroves on Thursday, February 27th.

 

 

Megan had the students engaged right away by giving each student a propagule (mangrove seed) to hold and explore.

Next, Megan introduced the students to three types of mangroves red, white and black, while Tim and Ariel put branch samples of each type of mangrove at the students' seats.

The students observed salt crystals on the leaves on this mangrove branch.

Here Arielle was assisting a student in identifying each of the three different mangrove branches.

 

Megan did the same.

This student found a propagule still attached to her branch.

 

This student tasted the salt deposited on this leaf.

Once the students had an opportunity to get to know their branches. Megan quized them by naming a type of mangrove and the students had to hold up their branch for that type of mangrove.

 

For a culminating activity, the students colored pictures of different animals that live in and around a mangrove. Once they were done coloring they brought their picture up to the Smartboard, named their animal, told the class where the animal lives and taped it on the mangrove habitat projected on the Smartboard.

 

The children also wrote one thing they learned about mangroves on an Exit Ticket (sticky note) and shared what they learned with their classmates.

 

What a great hands-on real world experience!