FieLD ExPeRiEnCe!!

Well, my two weeks in the school is over :(. I had a lot of fun with those 5th graders and got pretty attached. They were fun to joke with and they worked pretty hard for me. They learned about Grizzly Bears in Alaska. They created their own Alaska maps labeling the two main mountain ranges: Alaska and Brooks, Denali National Park, Mt. McKinley, and their cardinal directions. They also drew some of the animals: caribou, whales, salmon, dall sheep, grizzlies, etc. They were very artistic to say the least.

Grizzly in Alaska

They also learned how the daylight hours in the summer are longer, and the sun is constantly out for about 3 months, and the opposite happens in the winter. They found that pretty interesting. They wanted to live in Alaska so they could go to school when it was still dark outside!haha. However, they didn't care for the fact that in the summer they would have to try and sleep with the sun still shining through their windows.
Another interesting topic they learned about was the aurora borealis, also known as the Northern Lights. We read a folklore poetry book about the different legends of what earlier tribes thought the lights represented: such as wars to come, fox tails, or ancestors doing spirit dances. For the final day, they created their own Aurora legends and made chalk drawings of their Northern Lights on black construction paper . They pasted their legends on the back of their drawings and we made a class book out of it. I was very pleased with the results. They put a lot of effort into their chalk drawings, which had to consist of an Arctic landscape and their own aurora

Aurora in Greenland

One of my favorite moments was during the reading of their book, it mentioned how grizzly bears can eat 200,000 soapberries in one day. The students wanted to know why they liked them so much and what they tasted like. I knew why the bears liked them, because they have a lot of sugar that helps them store fat for the winter. However, I didn't know how they tasted. As we read on, the author mentioned that he had tasted one and it was pretty bitter. He also stated that bear droppings mainly consist of the remains of the berries they ate. Then, these droppings grow new berry bushes next year. The kids were all grossed out, and they made a pretty funny connection. They said, " EWWW, no wonder the author didn't like the taste of those berries!!" LOL. I couldn't help but laugh for about 2 minutes straight. They were a pretty clever group.

Yummy Soapberries!!

Another funny was when I taught them how to draw their own grizzly bears with step by step instruction. They had just learned that the grizzly bear's body is pretty thin when it comes out of hibernation. When some of them were finished, they thought their bears' legs were too skinny or the body wasn't thick enough. Some thought their bears looked like pigs! I just told the ones that had skinny bears that their bear just came out of hibernation, and the ones that thought their bear looked like a pig..I told them they just had their 200,000 soapberries for the day. They all thought that was pretty funny and they ended up being satisfied with their pictures after that! :)
They were pretty sad to see me go. They begged me to come back and visit. They're supposedly going on a field trip on April 29th and they all wanted me to come. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera and take pictures of my class! I would have posted them so you guys could see. When I go back to visit, I'll be sure to get a class picture. All in all, it was a WONDERFUL experience.