Hi!
Hope you're enjoying a wonderful springtime! This past week HomeSchool students chose the wild mammal they would like to research for their last take-home project. Projects are due and presentations will be made on Tuesday, May 7th. This is a big project, with many components. Please spend some time on it each day so you can be proud of it! Here are the details:Each student received 5 sheets of paper. One is in case you make a mistake on something.Page 1: Draw and color your mammal using any medium.Page 2: Write and/or draw a description of your mammal, including size, weight, colors, what they eat, what eats them, how long mothers carry their babies before they are born, how soon babies can walk/run after being born, how long young stay with their Moms, where they live, if they migrate from a winter range to a summer range, how many are left in the world.Page 3: Choose a national park where your mammal is found. Write about or draw your mammal in that park, where the park is located on a map or globe, what the population of your mammal is within that park, any problems or concerns for that mammal.Page 4: Write or draw a story about your mammal. It can be a story you found during your research or one that you make up based on what you have learned. You may write it out line by line on the masterbook paper or storyboard it on the paper, drawing several scenes from the story.
We continued to practice telling time on a clock with hands. Everyone is doing a fantastic job with this! We did an activity in which we looked at photos of animals and told which animal group they were in (insect, amphibian reptile, fish, bird, or mammal). Everyone was fast and accurate at this! We read The Mud Pony, a traditional Skidi Pawnee tale about a white-faced pony made of clay that comes to life to help a young boy.
We had a surprise visit on Thursday from Officer Ellijah and Norbo the Cobb County wonder dog. They brought us some of Norbo's business cards to share with all the students in the school. We attended the spectacular play, Joseph and His Coat of Many Colors, performed by the Lower Grades and Middle Grades students. We did an archaeology dig in the deep sand of HomeSchool Beach. Using shovels and rakes, we unearthed bones, skulls, antlers, horns, shells, coral, sea (creek) glass, jewels, and a turkey foot!
Next Tuesday morning we will have one more maypole practice before we perform the maypole dance at Grand Friends Day Friday, May 3rd at 11:00am.
Next Thursday, we will meet at 9:45am at TELLUS Science Museum for our all-day field trip. Wear good museum walking shoes (not rubber boots) and bring a picnic lunch and rain jacket. It is supposed to rain in the morning but we will be inside. TELLUS is located at Exit #293 of I-75. Their address is 100 Tellus Drive, Cartersville. Admission to TELLUS is $11.95 plus tax for children (3 to 17) and $15.95 plus tax for adults. From there we will go to the nearby Booth Western Art Museum. It is located at 501 Museum Drive in downtown Cartersville. Admission to the Booth Museum is free for children 12 and under and $12.00 for adults. If you are not able to go that day, please arrange for your child to ride with another HomeSchool family. Please send about $14.00 with your child to cover their entrance to TELLUS.
Our next Garden Girls Girl Scouts meeting will be Tuesday, May 7th, 3:30-5:00pm. We will start out in the Marigold Room upstairs. The program this time will be Caving Basics. Wear jeans, a t-shirt, and old tennis shoes as we will get wet and muddy!
Save the date: Saturday, May 11th, 10:30am-12:30pm: Hiking with Prancer at Pettit Environmental Preserve. This is a 70-acre preserve in Bartow County (between Cartersville and Dallas). It is only open to the public one day a month. Use Douthit Bridge Road, Dallas GA when using GPS. Then follow their small signs. Admission is $3.00/person with a maximum of $10.00/family. Prancer and I will be there that day to walk the 1.7-mile loop trail around the gorgeous lake. The trail is rough in some places and does not accommodate strollers. Leashed dogs are welcome. Please join us! I'm sure it will become one of your favorite hiking spots.
Quote from Max Phillips, 18-year-old Harvard freshman from Fayette County,Tennessee: Nature unites us. From the Inuit of Greenland to Tsonga of Mozambique to the inhabitants of every city, all of humanity share the same planet, the same very fragile drop of water and stone floating in the vastness of the known, and unknown, cosmos. To date, ours is the only planet amongst the stars able to support human life—adequate reason to warrant its protection. But nature offers humanity much more than sustenance; nature is purity, art, and life. Without it, we would lack not only the ability to survive physically, but also spiritually. Without nature, Mankind cannot exist in body or soul. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not the death of the first that frightens me the most. Before the famine and flood, comes the end of beauty and wonder, and with it, the death of the human spirit. As sand replaces fields of wild flowers, piles of plastic replace coral reefs and silent springs replace the raucous choruses of songbirds, we gradually lose that which has united us for eons. To live on an earth without nature is to merely exist, and yet, our very existence in a world without nature is, in itself, an impossibility.
I'm happy to share our little corner of the planet with you,
Ki Sonya
