 |
| I've had some time to think minus the daily blur... |
There's a lot of things being home will allow. Hearing preschool aged and younger children play in the neighborhood backyards while their older counterparts are busy at school is magical, listening to NPR programs at their actual scheduled times kind of feels like quite the indulgence. Then, of course there's the inevitable turn of my mind towards cool things I can do with my 10 and 11 year olds as the school year finishes up, plus the excitement of planning for next years 9 and 10 year olds-doing a lot of that {one year makes such a difference!}. Look what I've been pondering...
Prehistoric Climate Change and Why It Matters Today
...smooth versus toothed leafs of course!
I love what the Smithsonian has to offer online. Its just not in the budget to actually go to the Smithsonian with my students, let alone many of the great museums around locally. But we can get a taste of a visit. Stuff like the smooth versus toothed leaf talk can lead to so many other things...writing stories about what it might be like if the temps changed 10 degrees, sorting smooth and toothed trees in the tree field guide, staging a fossil dig, pressing leafs, skits about what life may be like, career investigations {lots of kids say they want to do this, of course, after seeing someone digging up fossils}...you get the idea. Those kids that love numbers even get off on the equations presented in the little museum segment {yeah, there are kids whose brains love and see the world through numbers!}.
The gist of this leaf thing is that sawtooth edged leafs equal a cooler climate and smooth edged leafs are found in warmer climates. As the temperature average goes up as a result of more CO2 in the atmosphere there will be less sawtooth varieties and more smooth. Think of what that means. I love this stuff.
Next year we may even have some actual trees the class can go look at.
 |
| grape sawtooth leafs |
 |
| raspberry sawtooth leafs |
 |
| Lemon leaf...I thought for sure the lemon would be smooth, but are those teeth? Maybe its just my tree and its difficulties..... |
