Nies Class News: Room 86, Grant School 5th Grade: TOO BUSY TO BLOG!

Spring has brought lots of great activities for our All-Stars, including Mr. Nies. Last week, besides our usually Ecoschoolhouse activities, I also attended 7th grade camp at Lake Ozark State Park. This will be a trip our kids will enjoy next year as 6th graders and I got to tell them a little bit about it. With regard to our busy week, highlights included another great field trip, working on dream houses with our preschool friends, Ms. Sweeny's last day, a very wet Eco Club hike, and the 1st place Grant Generals take the championship! I will add photos from each event throughout the day as I gather them!

Next week, we start with a field trip on Monday to Prairie Forks Conservation Area. On this trip, we will see the habitat of an endangered shiner, hear from a crayfish expert, and locate pond organisms. I have shortened this field trip to end about 1:15 so we can make it back before afternoon weather. If any extreme weather is forecasted we will cancel this trip and we also have the option to end at lunchtime. Students know to dress for the weather and bring their own lunch.

Academically, we will focus on our condensed TIME magazine, continue our dream house project, finish our water cycle learning, start our nutrition/endocrine health unit, and finish the our Civil War learning. Our Civil War learning will finish with our field trip to the Centralia Battlefield on Friday. There will be a lot of information and reminders coming home to get kids ready for that trip.

Enjoy these pics of our fun-filled learning week:


Good bye Ms Sweeny, thank you!

At Rock Bridge we started at the Grasslands Trailhead, the top of the watershed.

We hiked to a pond to observe and learn about many pond organisms like tadpoles (with legs) and damselflies.

We observed this salamander which will leave the pond as a newt and return again to reproduce as a salamander.

Then it was time for some spelunking in Conner's Cave.

This in an amphlapod, a very sensitive cave organism.

We saw many tri colored bats in the cave and discussed White Nose Bat Syndrome and how bats are important to ecosystems.

After lunch, it was down to Gans Creek at the bottom of the watershed. We viewed thousands of organisms from tadpoles to crayfish to snakes! Many more than the amount of organisms we saw at Flat Branch.