“Hold still, a butterfly has landed on your head!”
The butterflies seemed undisturbed by the cheery calls of the two-footed visitors to their greenhouse. The students discovered that some butterflies would land on their red, pink, orange, and purple T-shirts. Standing still, or moving slowly, gave butterflies an improved landing zone.
The third- and fourth-grade class began taking science-focused fieldtrips in the beginning of the school year. While studying different categories of the animal kingdom, we visited wonderful places in the community to experience creatures close-up. At El Jardín de las Mariposas, we listened to bess beetles, held mantids, and watched an owl butterfly emerge from its chrysalis. As we learned about reptiles, we passed two lovely boa constrictors around the circle of laps. A mother sloth and her young one came to browse and doze in branches near the meeting house just as we began our unit on mammals.
Parents helped in numerous ways. One parent was our bird guide in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. Another parent, a herpetologist, was our contact at the Ranario for our visit with amphibians. Some parents were our drivers and chaperones.
Saturn, by Annalisse. Jupiter in orbit around the sun, by Francis. [Click to enlarge]
Our class continued going outside this semester to make a scale model of the solar system. With a 30 cm “sun” posted at the far corner of the cemetery, we staked out the relative distances for the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars as we measured meters toward the school driveway. A 3 cm Jupiter was staked farther north along the footpath and Saturn was down the hill, between the school and the river. Uranus would have been beyond the cheese factory!
When our class visited the nearby Adventist school, we shared our solar system scale model and put the planet stakes in their playground. We sang a couple of songs, including “This Pretty Planet,” and our host students sang songs for us as well.
Saturn. [Click to enlarge]
As we learn more about stars, planets, and nebulae, the third- and fourth-graders plan stargazing evenings on the soccer field. Saturn is directly overhead in the early evening, the rings clearly visible with a telescope — they will not be this easy to see again until 2010. We made sextants and are learning to locate stars with azimuth and compass directions.
“This telescope is focused on Betelgeuse.” “We’re trying to find the nebula below Orion’s belt.” “Can you find Mars? It’s just northwest from Saturn and Regulus.” “I see it!”