Read Aloud: Poppy by Avi

    "Poppy is a young deer mouse whose troubles began when she and her mouse mate Ragweed are caught on a hill by Mr. Ocax, the owl. Without his permission, he immediately justifies his rules by killing Ragweed, and Poppy manages to scrape an escape from his deadly talons. 
    After another terrifying encounter with Mr. Ocax to ask permission for her entire family to move into a new farm, she is blamed on all sides by her siblings when their request was denied. Heartbroken and lonely, Poppy sets off on her own journey to ask help from a mysterious creature in the forest, the only animal that Mr. Ocax has ever feared..."
-All Readers.com

Owl Pellets

In the book, Poppy's friend, Ragweed, is attacked and eaten by Mr. Ocax, the owl. When Poppy goes to speak with the owl, she notices Ragweeds earring in one of his owl pellets. This led to a disscussion and later dissection of real owl pellets. The children worked collaboratively and sorted the very small bones. Later we tried to reconstruct the bones to discover what the owl had eaten that day.

Ecosystems

Our science lessons this week evolved from our discussions from our readaloud Poppy. As each child represented part of a river ecosystem- small fish, bears, green plants, algae; we crisscrossed our "habitat" with  yarn and ribbon to show how ecosystems are interconnected and maintain a delicate balance. We learned that ecosystems have food chains which consist of producers, consumers, and decomposers. 

Watershed Enviroscape

This was such an intense hands on experience I forgot to take photos! But our Watershed Enviroscape used cocoa and different colors of  Kool-aid to demonstrate that we all live in a watershed with water pollution coming from many sources. Nonpoint sources contribute a great deal to the pollution in our water bodies. The combined affect of pollution from many small sources can have a real impact on the quality of our shared water resources.

The children brainstormed ways to solve some of these issues with simple technology and through government enforcement.