Dear Fourth and Fifth Grade Families,
Thank you very much for pampering the teachers and administrators during Teacher Appreciation Week! The food was delicious, and the plants were gorgeous!
In our Botany Block last week, the students continued taking care of their bean seedlings, exposing them to light, watering them, and carefully observing their growth. Based on their observations, the students drew a series of pictures of the growing plants in their main lesson books to document the transition from germinating seed to a full plant form. Eventually, plants produce flowers, pollination takes place, and a new generation of seeds is formed. To learn more about the pollination process, the students studied the anatomy of flower heads with their various anatomical parts and how pollination takes place with the involvement of live pollinators or the wind. Finally, the students studied photosynthesis, a process in which the energy of sunlight is used to transform carbon dioxide and water into glucose, which, in combination with minerals from the ground, constitutes the primary building block of plant matter.
After looking in depth at the anatomy and development of archetypal plants, the class focus transitioned to the lower plant kingdom. The students first learned about mushrooms, organisms that are neither plants nor animals and belong to the kingdom of fungi. Mushrooms only constitute the fruit bodies of a large underground network of mycelium that connects them. The students learned that many mushrooms are either involved in breaking down dead wood matter or are living in symbiosis with specific trees, delivering important nutrients to the root system of trees via the mycelium. Then, the class studied Lichen, which is an interesting organism made up of a combination of algae and fungi. We will continue our study until the end of the school year and also finish reading The Golden Goblet.
Tomorrow is Field Day, and the students will likely get very wet during the course of the day. Please make sure your child is dressed to join the fun, wears sunscreen, and is equipped with a towel and extra clothes.
Announcements and Reminders:
Please send your child ready for full creekcess on Fridays with a change of clothes, hard-bottomed, closed-toed shoes, and a towel.
Please send two full water bottles to school daily; students feel the warmer temperatures and drink a lot of water!
Upcoming Events:
5/15 Field Day / Half Day for Kindergarten
5/17 Last Day of School - Full Day
With Gratitude,
Gaby
